Get raw title as defined in the HTML markup with JavaScript

Question

If I have a title with multiple consecutive spaces, document.title returns a string with a single space for each such space combo.

Example:
<title>[ ]</title> - HTML
"[ ]" - document.title

See also image below.

Question - how to get the raw string as it's defined in the HTML document? This caused a bug in one of my scraping scripts where a title should match some other element.

document.getElementsByTagName('title')[0].innerHTML? I don't know why this works, but it does... — Nathan Chu
– Nathan Chu, Commented Dec 10, 2020 at 19:35
@nthnchu document.getElementsByTagName('title')[0].innerHTML is just awful code. And don't use .innerHTML when the string doesn't contain any HTML. — Scott Marcus
– Scott Marcus, Commented Dec 10, 2020 at 19:36
@nthnchu just found it myself here, thanks: stackoverflow.com/a/43606154/2604492 — Paul
– Paul, Commented Dec 10, 2020 at 19:37
@SᴀᴍOnᴇᴌᴀ how is it a duplicate if the top answer suggests the code that caused my problem? — Paul
– Paul, Commented Jun 8, 2021 at 16:12

Paul · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-10 19:45:08Z

1

Looks like I found the answer myself, using the following works:
document.getElementsByTagName('title')[0].textContent

According to the comment of Scott Marcus (this answer), it's better to use:
document.querySelector("title").textContent

edited Dec 10, 2020 at 19:45

answered Dec 10, 2020 at 19:36

Paul

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13 Comments

Scott Marcus Over a year ago

No. Use document.querySelector("title").textContent Your answer relies on just horrible code.

daddygames Over a year ago

I agree that document.querySelector is the more efficient way, but labeling the other as "horrible/awful code" is a bit dramatic. It's fine; just maybe not the "best."

Scott Marcus Over a year ago

@Teemu It's not inherently good either. And, finding everything and putting it all in a collection, only to grab the first one and then throw away the collection is a waste of resources in all use cases.

daddygames Over a year ago

It's unnecessary to insult the code. It works. it does the job. If the purpose of the code is simple and/or the performance doesn't matter, then it really doesn't matter if the other code is used. I think most people would recommend NOT to use that code simply because we should train ourselves to always choose the most efficient code. But like I said before: you're being dramatic calling it "horrible" or "awful."

Scott Marcus Over a year ago

@daddygames I'm not violating any code of conduct because I'm not insulting anyone. I'm point out that code is bad - - that's not a bad thing. In fact, that's exactly the kind of thing we are supposed to do here. The code I'm talking about is potentially dangerous to use. It warrants a severe response. Right up there with eval().

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