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Answer 1

+1 A:

I believe that this question has what you're looking for: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/717224/how-to-get-selected-text-in-textarea

Edit:

This may also prove useful (linked in that question):

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/401593/javascript-textarea-selection

George Marian 2010-07-10 23:31:27

Hi, I can get some of it but not all of it to work, see the update of my question. Thanks.

usertest 2010-07-11 00:30:10

@user201140 You had no way of knowing, but I was already looking into it. I noticed the question had bubbled up on the front page. See my comment to your question.

George Marian 2010-07-11 00:34:40

Thanks, I've just found another plugin to the one you pointed out I'm not sure if there based on the same thing. I cut the example down (which included buttons) to what I needed and it seems to work. Its here - http://plugins.jquery.com/project/a-tools

usertest 2010-07-11 16:55:23

Answer 2

A:

The question seems clear enough but then the code is confusingly unrelated, so I'm going to answer the question as I understood it without the code.

The deleteSelectedText() function will delete the selected text from a <textarea> or <input type="text"> you provide and return you the text that was deleted.

function getSelectionBoundary(el, start) {
    var property = start ? "selectionStart" : "selectionEnd";
    var originalValue, textInputRange, precedingRange, pos, bookmark, isAtEnd;

    if (typeof el[property] == "number") {
        return el[property];
    } else if (document.selection && document.selection.createRange) {
        el.focus();

        var range = document.selection.createRange();
        if (range) {
            // Collapse the selected range if the selection is not a caret
            if (document.selection.type == "Text") {
                range.collapse(!!start);
            }

            originalValue = el.value;
            textInputRange = el.createTextRange();
            precedingRange = el.createTextRange();
            pos = 0;

            bookmark = range.getBookmark();
            textInputRange.moveToBookmark(bookmark);

            if (/[\r\n]/.test(originalValue)) {
                // Trickier case where input value contains line breaks

                // Test whether the selection range is at the end of the
                // text input by moving it on by one character and
                // checking if it's still within the text input.
                try {
                    range.move("character", 1);
                    isAtEnd = (range.parentElement() != el);
                } catch (ex) {
                    log.warn("Error moving range", ex);
                    isAtEnd = true;
                }
                range.moveToBookmark(bookmark);

                if (isAtEnd) {
                    pos = originalValue.length;
                } else {
                    // Insert a character in the text input range and use
                    // that as a marker
                    textInputRange.text = " ";
                    precedingRange.setEndPoint("EndToStart", textInputRange);
                    pos = precedingRange.text.length - 1;

                    // Delete the inserted character
                    textInputRange.moveStart("character", -1);
                    textInputRange.text = "";
                }
            } else {
                // Easier case where input value contains no line breaks
                precedingRange.setEndPoint("EndToStart", textInputRange);
                pos = precedingRange.text.length;
            }
            return pos;
        }
    }
    return 0;
}

function deleteSelectedText(el) {
    var start = getSelectionBoundary(el, true);
    var end = getSelectionBoundary(el, false);
    var val = el.value;
    var selectedText = val.slice(start, end);
    el.value = val.slice(0, start) + val.slice(end);
    return selectedText;
}

Tim Down 2010-07-11 22:44:05

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Get selected text in textarea

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