Javascript document.getElementById(“id”).value returning null instead of empty string when the element is an empty text box

Question

I have a text box element whose value I am trying to access using document.getElementById(\"id-name\").value. I find that the call is returning a null instead o

Answer 1

This demo is returning correctly for me in Chrome 14, FF3 and FF5 (with Firebug):

var mytextvalue = document.getElementById("mytext").value;
console.log(mytextvalue == ''); // true
console.log(mytextvalue == null); // false

and changing the console.log to alert, I still get the desired output in IE6.

Answer 2

It seems that you've omitted the value attribute in HTML markup.

Add it there as <input value="" ... >.

Answer 3

For your code

var mytextvalue = document.getElementById("mytext");

mytextvalue will contain null if you have a document.write() statement before this code. So remove the document.write statement and you should get a proper text object in the variable mytextvalue.

This is caused by document.write changing the document.

Answer 4

try this...    
<script type="text/javascript">
    function test(){
    var av=document.getElementById("mytext").value;
    alert(av);
    }
    </script>

    <input type="text" value="" id="mytext">
    <input type="button" onclick="test()" value="go" />

Answer 5

fyi, this can happen if you are using the html type="number" attribute on your input tag. Entering a non-number will clear it before your script knows what's going on.

Answer 6

Please check this fiddle and let me know if you get an alert of null value. I have copied your code there and added a couple of alerts. Just like others, I also dont see a null being returned, I get an empty string. Which browser are you using?