Change cursor position in the contenteditable div after changing innerHTML

Question

Hello,

I have a simple contenteditable div with some text in it. On onkeyup event i want to replace whole content (innerHTML) of the div based on regex.

For example,

HTML:

some text, more text and $even more text

Function in which i plan to get all text with $ ($even in example above) and wrap it in span tag:

div.onkeypress = function() { 
     div.innerHTML.replace(/(some_regexp)/, "<span class='class'>$1</span>"); 
}; 

The problem is after such replacement cursor jumps to the start of the div. I want it to stay where it was before.

I imagine i have to save coordinates of the cursor before change and then somehow using them set cursor back but how can i do it? :)

I tried saving range object but after editing i believe it points to nowhere.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The problem is that you're updating the whole innerHTML, but only a small part of it is changing. You can't use a regular expression and o a bulk replace. You need to scan the div and look for matches, create text ranges out of them and wrap the content with the span. See http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/range_intro.html , Programmatically creating a Range.

However, I think this won't work if the cursor is in the text to be replaced, it's a start though.

Answer 2

You know which text you are replacing. So you know the position of that text . there only you going to put the new text. Then also the position is same.After writing new html , yu can set cursor.

for eg

I dont undertsand the question

position of question is 5 an i replace it

I dont undertsand the answer

make the cursor position to 5

http://ajaxian.com/archives/javascript-tip-cross-browser-cursor-positioning

http://hartshorne.ca/2006/01/23/javascript_cursor_position/

http://geekswithblogs.net/svanvliet/archive/2005/03/24/textarea-cursor-position-with-javascript.aspx