Max characters in textarea with jquery

Question

I have the following code, and I\'m kind of stuck on what to do next. The idea is when you enter text into a text area a counter tells you how many characters you have left.

Answer 1

I find this works perfectly, and doesn't even flash the excess characters in the textarea before removing them, as a few other solutions do.

<h1>Add a comment:</h1>
<form>
    <textarea name="commentText" id="commentText"></textarea>
</form>
<br><span id="commentChars">1000</span> characters remaining

<script type="text/javascript">

    function checkChars(){
        var numChars = $('#commentText').val().length;
        var maxChars = 1000;
        var remChars = maxChars - numChars;
        if (remChars < 0) {
            $('#commentText').val($('#commentText').val().substring(0, maxChars));
                remChars = 0;
            }
        $('#commentChars').text(remChars);
    }

    $('#commentText').bind('input propertychange', function(){
        checkChars();
    });

    checkChars();

</script>

Answer 2

ehm, textarea maxlength is a valid attribute in html5 ? not supported in ie9, thats all.

w3nerds http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/textarea.html#textarea.attrs.maxlength

w3fools http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_textarea_maxlength.asp

Answer 3

I think best way using maxlenght property + jquery keydown, keyup, paste events

// text input maximum lenght
$(document).on('keydown keyup paste', 'input[type=text]', function(e) {
  var textArea = $('input[type=text]').val(),
    textLenght = textArea.length,
    limit = $('textarea').attr('maxlength'),
    remain = 'left ' + parseInt(limit - textLenght) + ' chars';
  $('#remain-title').text(remain);
  if (textLenght > 500) {
    $('textarea').val((textArea).substring(0, limit))
  }
});

// tex area maximum lenght
$(document).on('keydown keyup paste', 'textarea', function(e) {
  var textArea = $('textarea').val(),
    textLenght = textArea.length,
    limit = $('textarea').attr('maxlength'),
    remain = 'left ' + parseInt(limit - textLenght) + ' chars';
  $('#remain-description').text(remain);
  if (textLenght > 500) {
    $('textarea').val((textArea).substring(0, limit))
  }
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div>
  <label>Title</label>
  <p id="remain-title"></p>
  <input type="text" placeholder="Enter Title" maxlength="500"/>
</div>
<br>
<hr>
<br>
<div>
  <label>Description</label>
  <p id="remain-description"></p>
  <textarea placeholder="Enter custom description" rows="4" maxlength="500"></textarea>
</div>

See JSFiddle

Answer 4

Returning false and using .keypress() instead of .keyup() stops input once the length has been reached. Here's the example in a jsFiddle:

http://jsfiddle.net/p43BH/1/

Updated to allow backspace.