How to Check if a Variable is Number in Javascript
In this tutorial, you will learn how to check if a variable is number in javascript. There are certain primitive types in javascript and number is one of them. As the name suggests, any variable that holds a number as its value is considered to be of number type.
As you already know, javascript is a weakly typed language so there is no guarantee that the data type of a certain variable going to remain the same through its lifecycle. This makes it more important to learn how you can verify if a variable is holding a number before you even start accessing it.
To detect whether a variable is of type number or not, we can make use of typeof
and ternary (?
) operators. The typeof
operator returns the type of the variable.
In the following example, we have one global variable and upon click of a button, we will check whether it is of number type or not and display the result on the screen. Please have a look over the code example and the steps given below.
HTML & CSS
- We have 3 elements in the HTML file (
div
,button
, andh1
). Thediv
element is just a wrapper for the rest of the elements. - The
innerText
for thebutton
element is“Check”
and for theh1
element, it is“Result”
. - We have done some basic styling using CSS and added the link to our
style.css
stylesheet inside thehead
element. - We have also included our javascript file
script.js
with ascript
tag at the bottom.
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"> <title>Document</title> </head> <body> <div class="container"> <button>Check</button> <h1>Result</h1> </div> <script src="script.js"></script> </body> </html>
.container { text-align: center; } button { margin-top: 10px; padding: 10px 20px; }
Javascript
- We have selected the
button
element andh1
element using thedocument.querySelector()
method and stored them inbtnCheck
andoutput
variables respectively. - We have attached a
click
event listener to thebutton
element. - We have a global variable
myVariable
which holds100
as its value. - In the event handler function, we are using
typeof
and ternary (?
) operators to verify whethermyVariable
is of type number or not. Depending upon the result of the check, we will assign“Yes”
or“No”
to theresult
variable. - We are displaying the
result
in theh1
element using theinnerText
property.
let btnCheck = document.querySelector("button"); let output = document.querySelector("h1"); let myVariable = 100; btnCheck.addEventListener("click", () => { let result = typeof myVariable === "number" ? "Yes" : "No"; output.innerText = result; });