how to get the value of a textarea in jquery?

Question

i have this form and im trying to get the value from the text area. for some reason it doesn\'t want to.

Answer 1

You need to use .val() for textarea as it is an element and not a wrapper. Try

$('textarea#message').val()

Updated fiddle

Answer 2

You don't need to use textarea#message

var message = $('textarea#message').val();

You can directly use

var message = $('#message').val();

Answer 3

You can directly use

var message = $.trim($("#message").val());

Read more @ Get the Value of TextArea using the jQuery Val () Method

Answer 4

Value of textarea is also taken with val method:

var message = $('textarea#message').val();

Answer 5

$('textarea#message') cannot be undefined (if by $ you mean jQuery of course).

$('textarea#message') may be of length 0 and then $('textarea#message').val() would be empty that's all

Answer 6

You can also get the value by element's name attribute.

var message = $("#formId textarea[name=message]").val();