Object has no method 'replace'

Question

I'm try to run this function, which grabs all the checked checkbox values in to a comma separated string, and converts "," in to ", ", so it reads better. The problem is I'm getting a strange error:

$('.name_boxes').live('click', function() {
    var all_boxes = $('.name_boxes');
    var all_boxes_values = []
    for (var i = 0; i < all_boxes.length; i++) {
        if (all_boxes[i].checked) {
            all_boxes_values.push(all_boxes[i].value)
        }
    }
    var all_boxes_values_clean = all_boxes_values.replace(/,/g,", ");
    alert(all_boxes_values_clean);
});

The console error says:

Uncaught TypeError: Object Aaron Ramsey,Aaron Renfree has no method 'replace'.

I'm not getting the alert box.

This is a bit beyond me, can anybody explain what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

Although alert(some_array) prints a string representation of the array, the array itself is not a string. Thus, it does not have .replace. alert is forced to convert it into a string because the alert box can only show characters.

You can simply join using a custom separator, though. join is a function of arrays:

var all_boxes_values_clean = all_boxes_values.join(", ");

As a side note, I recommend console.log over alert because it:

1. shows the actual object/array instead of a string representation (especially useful with objects instead of the useless [object Object] you receive with alert)
2. frees you from closing the popup each time
3. keeps track of other logs so that you have an actual log of logs

Answer 2

all_boxes_values is an array, not a strings and thus it has no replace method.

Try

var all_boxes_values_clean = all_boxes_values.join(", ");

If you insist on performing regular expressions, convert an array to string first: all_boxes_values.toString().