Vanilla JavaScript String to Number

— 4 minute read

Sometimes we want to convert a number to a string; in my latest code piece, there was a limit set on a data attribute. This comes true as a string, so how do we convert this to a number in JavaScript?

In this case, there is not one but three valid and supported methods of converting our string to a number.

  • Number
  • parseInt
  • parseFloat

JavaScript Number Method

Number is a generic way of converting. It's actually the more stricter check here are some examples with outputs:

<!-- Number -->
console.log(Number(`1337`)); // 1337
console.log(Number(`13.37`)); // 13.37
console.log(Number(`13leet37`)); // NaN
console.log(Number(`13,37`)); // NaN

As you can see it works on actual numbers, but as soon as we use other characters or a comma it won't work.

JavaScript ParseInt Method

ParseInt converts our string into an integer non rounded. It has two arguments, the input and the radix which is the base number. For us the default is 10

<!-- ParseInt -->
const text1 = '1337';
const text2 = '13.37';
const text3 = '13leet37';
const text4 = '13,37';
console.log(parseInt(text1, 10)); // 1337
console.log(parseInt(text2, 10)); // 13
console.log(parseInt(text3, 10)); // 13
console.log(parseInt(text4, 10)); // 13

The downside can be it's rounding everything, so let's look at ParseFloat.

JavaScript ParseFloat Method

As mentioned the parseFloat is used to return stuff with decimals.

<!-- ParseFloat -->
const text1 = '1337';
const text2 = '13.37';
const text3 = '13.3leet37';
const text4 = '13,37';
console.log(parseFloat(text1, 10)); // 13.37
console.log(parseFloat(text2, 10)); // 13
console.log(parseFloat(text3, 10)); // 13.3
console.log(parseFloat(text4, 10)); // 13

Very cool method!

See all these in action on Codepen.

See the Pen Vanilla JavaScript String to Number by Chris Bongers (@rebelchris) on CodePen.

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