JS: Variable appears to be a string but displays as: "[object Object]"

Question

I am parsing wikipedia documents and using the npm html-to-text converter package to extract just the text from various wikipedia pages. I am encountering issues when trying to log / send this content to be used on the client side.

Here is my implementation with the npm package:

 var stringer = htmltext.fromString(data, {
              wordwrap: 130
 });

 console.log(stringer) // returns [object Object]
 console.log(typeof stringer); // returns string
 console.log(util.inspect(stringer)); // returns '[object Object]'

As you can see in the comments, the first console log appears to represent the variable as an object but the second shows that is a string. How can this be?

console.dir gave me '[object Object]' and stringer.toString() gave me [object Object]. Not really sure what to make of that. — chackerian
– chackerian, Commented Aug 1, 2016 at 6:46
Maybe it is a string and the string content is legitimately [object Object]? I would look further up the stack, finger pointing at at the library, if your not doing anything else in-between getting the string and logging that is. — ste2425
– ste2425, Commented Aug 1, 2016 at 6:53

Chris · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-01 06:55:31Z

2

What are you passing into htmltext.fromString()?

Are you sure you aren't passing an object into there which is converting to string as [object Object]?

For example, if I type the following into a node console I get what you're seeing. :)

 > var htmltotext = require("html-to-text")
 undefined
 > htmltotext.fromString({})
 '[object Object]'
 >

The usage illustrates that .fromString() expects a string input.

answered Aug 1, 2016 at 6:55

Chris

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1 Comment

chackerian Over a year ago

Turns out I was passing in an object. I though it was a string but I was wrong. Now I feel dumb.

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