1 00:00:02,469 --> 00:00:04,490 Now there is one last 2 00:00:04,490 --> 00:00:08,260 characteristic about strings which I want to show to you, 3 00:00:08,260 --> 00:00:11,483 which is related to arrays actually. 4 00:00:12,500 --> 00:00:17,070 Let's say we have a certain username 5 00:00:18,850 --> 00:00:20,793 Max here in this case, 6 00:00:21,750 --> 00:00:25,930 and now we want to find out how long that name is. 7 00:00:25,930 --> 00:00:27,860 As a human we can count it, 8 00:00:27,860 --> 00:00:32,159 but we don't always want to count because it's error prone. 9 00:00:32,159 --> 00:00:35,900 And in our running application, in our running website, 10 00:00:35,900 --> 00:00:40,460 that variable value might actually not be hard coded into 11 00:00:40,460 --> 00:00:42,440 this code as it's currently. 12 00:00:42,440 --> 00:00:46,040 But instead we might be fetching this from some input field 13 00:00:46,040 --> 00:00:49,320 on the page, and that is actually something 14 00:00:49,320 --> 00:00:53,200 we will be doing in this demo I showed you earlier. 15 00:00:53,200 --> 00:00:57,263 Which we are going to build in the next course section, 16 00:00:58,220 --> 00:01:01,370 because in this demo we need to count 17 00:01:01,370 --> 00:01:04,030 the length of the user input, 18 00:01:04,030 --> 00:01:06,740 which of course changes with every keystroke 19 00:01:06,740 --> 00:01:09,660 and which we as a developer therefore don't know 20 00:01:09,660 --> 00:01:14,350 in advance, and in situations like this we need a way of 21 00:01:14,350 --> 00:01:18,900 finding out how long some text is. 22 00:01:18,900 --> 00:01:22,300 So it's not something we need here for this example, 23 00:01:22,300 --> 00:01:24,710 this hard coded string, 24 00:01:24,710 --> 00:01:28,110 which means a value we define as a developer, 25 00:01:28,110 --> 00:01:29,580 which never changes, 26 00:01:29,580 --> 00:01:33,660 which does not depend on some input of the website visitor. 27 00:01:33,660 --> 00:01:36,230 Here it is just hard coded, and therefore, 28 00:01:36,230 --> 00:01:38,240 we could count it manually, 29 00:01:38,240 --> 00:01:40,410 but let's assume we're getting this from 30 00:01:40,410 --> 00:01:44,090 some dynamic input, and we don't know the length in advance. 31 00:01:44,090 --> 00:01:47,470 In such cases, we might want to derive the length 32 00:01:47,470 --> 00:01:48,720 programmatically, 33 00:01:48,720 --> 00:01:53,230 and that is thankfully easy to do in Java script. 34 00:01:53,230 --> 00:01:57,010 We can just use the string that we want to count, 35 00:01:57,010 --> 00:01:58,910 or the variable that holds the string, 36 00:01:58,910 --> 00:02:00,330 which I have in this case 37 00:02:00,330 --> 00:02:05,053 and then use the dot notation to access dot length. 38 00:02:05,990 --> 00:02:10,500 And that's really important, and maybe also confusing. 39 00:02:10,500 --> 00:02:13,840 A string is not an object. 40 00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:17,960 And yet we can use the dot notation on a string 41 00:02:17,960 --> 00:02:21,140 to access various methods. 42 00:02:21,140 --> 00:02:24,530 Since we have this purple kind of blocks here, 43 00:02:24,530 --> 00:02:28,500 on that string, and we also have this length property, 44 00:02:28,500 --> 00:02:30,673 in addition to all these methods. 45 00:02:31,590 --> 00:02:35,140 Now this is simply something that's built into JavaScript. 46 00:02:35,140 --> 00:02:39,100 You could say that all the strings you are creating are 47 00:02:39,100 --> 00:02:43,530 automatically wrapped with an invisible object behind the 48 00:02:43,530 --> 00:02:45,520 scenes, by Java script, 49 00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:49,100 so that you have certain properties that you can access on 50 00:02:49,100 --> 00:02:50,400 your strings. 51 00:02:50,400 --> 00:02:55,270 So they kind of are converted into objects behind the scenes 52 00:02:55,270 --> 00:02:57,180 and we have this behavior 53 00:02:57,180 --> 00:03:01,303 so that we have certain functionalities or utilities 54 00:03:01,303 --> 00:03:04,550 that we can access on these strings. 55 00:03:04,550 --> 00:03:06,660 Like for example, dot length, 56 00:03:06,660 --> 00:03:08,950 to get the length of this string, 57 00:03:08,950 --> 00:03:12,003 the number of characters that make up this string. 58 00:03:13,220 --> 00:03:18,090 And if I saved this, then I get three here as a result, 59 00:03:18,090 --> 00:03:22,103 which of course is the length of this Max string. 60 00:03:23,640 --> 00:03:26,850 And as you can see, if I, 61 00:03:26,850 --> 00:03:31,820 again add a dot here and I get this suggestion popup, 62 00:03:31,820 --> 00:03:34,440 there is way more than just length. 63 00:03:34,440 --> 00:03:36,640 And you see we have a bunch of methods here, 64 00:03:36,640 --> 00:03:39,050 which we can access on our string, 65 00:03:39,050 --> 00:03:41,500 and that length property which we saw. 66 00:03:41,500 --> 00:03:44,440 And definitely feel free to play around with them. 67 00:03:44,440 --> 00:03:47,710 For example, there is the toUpperCase method, 68 00:03:47,710 --> 00:03:50,180 and since it's a method we need to execute it 69 00:03:50,180 --> 00:03:52,770 by adding these parentheses here. 70 00:03:52,770 --> 00:03:56,550 And if I call that, then I get this string 71 00:03:56,550 --> 00:03:59,513 converted to all uppercase characters. 72 00:04:00,360 --> 00:04:03,220 So these are utility functionalities, 73 00:04:03,220 --> 00:04:06,323 which can come in handy from time to time.