I'm trying to figure out the best way to refactor the javascript replace method. I will need to call this same method on many different variables and am unsure of the best practices for refactoring.
function profitMargin(){
var revenue = jQuery("#revenue").val().replace(/[^\d.-]/g, '');
var profit = jQuery("#profit").val().replace(/[^\d.-]/g, '');
var profitMar = (profit/revenue*100).toFixed(4);
If you want to avoid having to repeat the same regular expression everywhere you can put that in a variable:
var reNonNumeric = /[^\d.-]/g;
// and then later
var revenue = jQuery("#revenue").val().replace(reNonNumeric, '');
var profit = jQuery("#profit").val().replace(reNonNumeric, '');
// etc.
That makes your code a bit more efficient in that it only creates one regex object, and a bit more descriptive (depending on how you name the variable).
Or you could create a function to do that type of replacement:
function removeNonNumericCharacters(val) {
return val.replace(/[^\d.-]/g, '');
}
// which you'd use later with:
var revenue = removeNonNumericCharacters( jQuery("#revenue").val() );
var profit = removeNonNumericCharacters( jQuery("#profit").val() );
Note that either way your revenue and profit variables will contain strings. The / operator converts its operands to numbers, but the regex replace you're doing doesn't actually assure that such conversion is possible: the user may have entered "-..-", which your regex would accept but which obviously isn't a valid number.
String.prototype.yourFunction = function () {
return this.replace(/[^\d.-]/g, '');
}
var revenue = jQuery("#revenue").val().yourFunction();
Hope this can help you.
In addition to @nnnnnn's answer, you can also store jquery elements in variables to avoid to find them in the DOM each time you call the function.
var $revenue = jQuery("#revenue"),
$profit = jQuery("#profit");
// Later in your function
var revenue = $revenue.val().replace(/[^\d.-]/g, '');
var profit = $profit.val().replace(/[^\d.-]/g, '');
dropNumericPrefix