I'm looking for a way to set a selection in a textarea in Internet Explorer. In other browsers, this works just fine:
textarea.selectionStart = start;
textarea.selectionEnd = end;
In IE, I assume I have to use createRange
and adjust the selection somehow, but I cannot figure out how.
Extra bonus points for a link to a proper documentation about createRange
and associated methods, MSDN isn't helping out much.
This works for me:
<textarea id="lol">
noasdfkvbsdobfbgvobosdobfbgoasopdobfgbooaodfgh
</textarea>
<script>
var range = document.getElementById('lol').createTextRange();
range.collapse(true);
range.moveStart('character', 5);
range.moveEnd('character', 10);
range.select();
</script>
Useful links:
- http://help.dottoro.com/ljlwflaq.php
- http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/ncz/
- http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/range_intro.html
moveStart() at MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536623%28VS.85%29.aspx
moveEnd() at MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536620%28VS.85%29.aspx
Try with
function select(e, start, end){
e.focus();
if(e.setSelectionRange)
e.setSelectionRange(start, end);
else if(e.createTextRange) {
e = e.createTextRange();
e.collapse(true);
e.moveEnd('character', end);
e.moveStart('character', start);
e.select();
}
}
select(document.getElementById('textarea_id'), 5, 10);
As already commented the move methods see the line separators as one character (\n
) instead of two (\r\n
). I have adjusted the routine to compensate for that:
function select(el, start, end) {
el.focus();
if (el.setSelectionRange) {
el.setSelectionRange(start, end);
}
else {
if(el.createTextRange) {
var normalizedValue = el.value.replace(/\r\n/g, "\n");
start -= normalizedValue.slice(0, start).split("\n").length - 1;
end -= normalizedValue.slice(0, end).split("\n").length - 1;
range=el.createTextRange();
range.collapse(true);
range.moveEnd('character', end);
range.moveStart('character', start);
range.select();
}
}
}
Beware of line separators, move* methods see them as one character, but they are actually two - \r\n