Develop Reference

Edge is unable to set clipboardData

First of all, let me note that this works perfectly in Chrome.
I am trying to override the copy event in JavaScript and replace the clipboard contents with my own data. I extracted the essentials of the problem into this fiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/gxewmc2h/4/ (yes, I need to use global variables to set the data)
window.globalCopyObject = {};
window.globalCopyObject.clipboardDataText = "text value";
window.globalCopyObject.clipboardHtmlText = "html value";
document.addEventListener("copy", function (event) {
event.clipboardData.setData("text/plain", window.globalCopyObject.clipboardDataText);
event.clipboardData.setData("text/html", window.globalCopyObject.clipboardHtmlText);
event.preventDefault();
});
When you use Edge and try to copy the text on the page and paste it into the input, it does override the event since the clipboard is emptied, but it does not fill it with new data.
As far as I know, the latest Edge should support the clipboard API, is there something obvious I am missing?
Thank you in advance for any ideas.

getSelection.getRangeAt(0) in Google Chrome Extension

I'm trying to determine the position of a selected text in my browser. I need the position to show a tooltip above the selected text. I guess if I get the boundaries, I'm able to calculate the middle of that.
I fiddled around and looked here for suggestions, but couldn't find a solution.
If I'm not mistaken, this seems to be a problem related to Google Chrome?
Please be aware, that I'm trying to create a chrome-extension, so there is no need of testing if it works in Firefox / IE ...
This is all the code which causes the trouble:
var selection = window.getSelection();
// calculate the posiition of the selection
var oRange = selection.getRangeAt(0);
var oRect = oRange.getBoundingClientRect();
console.log(oRect);
(I tried to refer to this example here)
The error is like this:
background.js:20 Uncaught DOMException: Failed to execute 'getRangeAt' on 'Selection': 0 is not a valid index.
If this is doable with jQuery, I don't mind using this as well, I'm not restricted to native JavaScript.
Complete code of my background.js
chrome.contextMenus.create({
"title": "Übersetzen",
"contexts": ["selection"],
"onclick" : clickHandler
});
function clickHandler(e) {
var translateUrl = "https://glosbe.com/gapi/translate?from=eng&dest=deu&format=json&phrase=" + encodeURI(e.selectionText.toLowerCase()) + "&pretty=true";
$.getJSON(translateUrl, callback);
// console.log(data.responseTex);
}
function callback(data) {
var translation = data.tuc[0].phrase.text;
var selection = document.getSelection();
console.log(selection);
// calculate the position of the selection
var oRange = selection.getRangeAt(0);
var oRect = oRange.getBoundingClientRect();
console.log(oRect);
var selection = "";
chrome.tabs.query({active: true, currentWindow: true}, function(tabs){
chrome.tabs.sendMessage(tabs[0].id, {translation: translation}, function(response) {});
});
}
Update: When I run this code directly in the browser-console, it works as expected (If that is useful as a hint)
Update2: Maybe this is important: After selecting the text, I open the context-menu (via mouseclick) and click on an item, but the selection shouldn't be affected by this.
Update3: The code above works fine in an example-HTML page. My Background script seems to get an unfilled object (where there all the values are null)
Update 4: I added the complete code for reference (I also tried chrome.tabs.executeScript - but without success)

You need to get the selection in your content-script, not in the background script. Try calling your "onMessage"-method and use var s = window.getSelection() there. If you log this into the console, it works as expected.

Get nsIDOMWindow of a Tab to do Text Input

Is it possible to use Text Input Processor on a specific Tab of a Firefox window?
Do all the tabs share the same nsIDOMWindow object? If so, then is there any other solution?
Rephrasing my problem: I want to type text to a specific tab, and if there is more than one, then it might not be the current.
Below is an example code to write text on any Firefox window, but only for current tab:
function myTestFunc() {
// var windows = Services.wm.getEnumerator("navigation:browser");
var windows = require("sdk/windows");
for (let browserWindow of windows.browserWindows) {
//console.log(window.title);
var chromeWindow = viewFor(browserWindow);
console.log(chromeWindow.document.location.href);
var idomWindow = chromeWindow.QueryInterface(Ci.nsIDOMWindow);
var TIP = Cc["#mozilla.org/text-input-processor;1"].
createInstance(Ci.nsITextInputProcessor);
if(!TIP.beginInputTransaction(idomWindow, onNotifyImpl)) {
console.log("Error TIP can't start");
continue;
}
TIP.setPendingCompositionString("foo-bar-buzz");
if (!TIP.flushPendingComposition()) {
console.log("Failed to flush");
continue; // Composition is not started
}
}
}

nsIDOMWindow (+ various related interfaces like the docshell) is the XPCOM representation of regular window objects in the w3c specs. And since window objects can be nested (e.g. via iframes) so can be nsIDOMWindows. When you're accessing browser windows you're generally accessing the outer windows representing the browser chrome, not the content.
In principle you can access a tab's content window directly from its <browser> XUL element, but to be forward-compatible with e10s you should use framescripts instead.

Javascript - Copy string to clipboard as text/html

Is there a way in javascript to copy an html string (ie <b>xx<b>) into the clipboard as text/html, so that it can then be pasted into for example a gmail message with the formatting (ie, xx in bold)
There exists solutions to copy to the clipboard as text (text/plain) for example https://stackoverflow.com/a/30810322/460084 but not as text/html
I need a non flash, non jquery solution that will work at least on IE11 FF42 and Chrome.
Ideally I would like to store both text and html versions of the string in the clipboard so that the right one can be pasted depending if the target supports html or not.

Since this answer has gotten some attention, I have completely rewritten the messy original to be easier to grasp. If you want to look at the pre-revisioned version, you can find it here.
The boiled down question:
Can I use JavaScript to copy the formatted output of some HTML code to the users clipboard?
Answer:
Yes, with some limitations, you can.
Solution:
Below is a function that will do exactly that. I tested it with your required browsers, it works in all of them. However, IE 11 will ask for confirmation on that action.
Explanation how this works can be found below, you may interactively test the function out in this jsFiddle.
// This function expects an HTML string and copies it as rich text.
function copyFormatted (html) {
// Create container for the HTML
// [1]
var container = document.createElement('div')
container.innerHTML = html
// Hide element
// [2]
container.style.position = 'fixed'
container.style.pointerEvents = 'none'
container.style.opacity = 0
// Detect all style sheets of the page
var activeSheets = Array.prototype.slice.call(document.styleSheets)
.filter(function (sheet) {
return !sheet.disabled
})
// Mount the container to the DOM to make `contentWindow` available
// [3]
document.body.appendChild(container)
// Copy to clipboard
// [4]
window.getSelection().removeAllRanges()
var range = document.createRange()
range.selectNode(container)
window.getSelection().addRange(range)
// [5.1]
document.execCommand('copy')
// [5.2]
for (var i = 0; i < activeSheets.length; i++) activeSheets[i].disabled = true
// [5.3]
document.execCommand('copy')
// [5.4]
for (var i = 0; i < activeSheets.length; i++) activeSheets[i].disabled = false
// Remove the container
// [6]
document.body.removeChild(container)
}
Explanation:
Look into the comments in the code above to see where you currently are in the following process:
We create a container to put our HTML code into.
We style the container to be hidden and detect the page's active stylesheets. The reason will be explained shortly.
We put the container into the page's DOM.
We remove possibly existing selections and select the contents of our container.
We do the copying itself. This is actually a multi-step process:
Chrome will copy text as it sees it, with applied CSS styles, while other browsers will copy it with the browser's default styles.
Therefore we will disable all user styles before copying to get the most consistent result possible.
Before we do this, we prematurely execute the copy command.
This is a hack for IE11: In this browser, the copying must be manually confirmed once. Until the user clicked the "Confirm" button, IE users would see the page without any styles. To avoid this, we copy first, wait for confirmation, then disable the styles and copy again. That time we won't get a confirmation dialog since IE remembers our last choice.
We actually disable the page's styles.
Now we execute the copy command again.
We re-enable the stylesheets.
We remove the container from the page's DOM.
And we're done.
Caveats:
The formatted content will not be perfectly consistent across browsers.
As explained above, Chrome (i.e. the Blink engine) will use a different strategy than Firefox and IE: Chrome will copy the contents with their CSS styling, but omitting any styles that are not defined.
Firefox and IE on the other hand won't apply page-specific CSS, they will apply the browser's default styles. This also means they will have some weird styles applied to them, e.g. the default font (which is usually Times New Roman).
For security reasons, browsers will only allow the function to execute as an effect of a user interaction (e.g. a click, keypress etc.)

There is a much simpler solution. Copy a section of your page (element) than copying HTML.
With this simple function you can copy whatever you want (text, images, tables, etc.) on your page or the whole document to the clipboard.
The function receives the element id or the element itself.
function copyElementToClipboard(element) {
window.getSelection().removeAllRanges();
let range = document.createRange();
range.selectNode(typeof element === 'string' ? document.getElementById(element) : element);
window.getSelection().addRange(range);
document.execCommand('copy');
window.getSelection().removeAllRanges();
}
How to use:
copyElementToClipboard(document.body);
copyElementToClipboard('myImageId');

If you want to use the new Clipboard API, use the write method like below:
var type = "text/html";
var blob = new Blob([text], { type });
var data = [new ClipboardItem({ [type]: blob })];
navigator.clipboard.write(data).then(
function () {
/* success */
},
function () {
/* failure */
}
);
Currently(Sep 2021), The problem is that Firefox doesn't support this method.

I have done a few modifications on Loilo's answer above:
setting (and later restoring) the focus to the hidden div prevents FF going into endless recursion when copying from a textarea
setting the range to the inner children of the div prevents chrome inserting an extra <br> in the beginning
removeAllRanges on getSelection() prevents appending to existing selection (possibly not needed)
try/catch around execCommand
hiding the copy div better
On OSX this will not work. Safari does not support execCommand and chrome OSX has a known bug https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=552975
code:
clipboardDiv = document.createElement('div');
clipboardDiv.style.fontSize = '12pt'; // Prevent zooming on iOS
// Reset box model
clipboardDiv.style.border = '0';
clipboardDiv.style.padding = '0';
clipboardDiv.style.margin = '0';
// Move element out of screen
clipboardDiv.style.position = 'fixed';
clipboardDiv.style['right'] = '-9999px';
clipboardDiv.style.top = (window.pageYOffset || document.documentElement.scrollTop) + 'px';
// more hiding
clipboardDiv.setAttribute('readonly', '');
clipboardDiv.style.opacity = 0;
clipboardDiv.style.pointerEvents = 'none';
clipboardDiv.style.zIndex = -1;
clipboardDiv.setAttribute('tabindex', '0'); // so it can be focused
clipboardDiv.innerHTML = '';
document.body.appendChild(clipboardDiv);
function copyHtmlToClipboard(html) {
clipboardDiv.innerHTML=html;
var focused=document.activeElement;
clipboardDiv.focus();
window.getSelection().removeAllRanges();
var range = document.createRange();
range.setStartBefore(clipboardDiv.firstChild);
range.setEndAfter(clipboardDiv.lastChild);
window.getSelection().addRange(range);
var ok=false;
try {
if (document.execCommand('copy')) ok=true; else utils.log('execCommand returned false !');
} catch (err) {
utils.log('execCommand failed ! exception '+err);
}
focused.focus();
}
see jsfiddle where you can enter html segment into the textarea and copy to the clipboard with ctrl+c.

For those looking for a way to do this using ClipboardItem and cannot get it to work even with dom.events.asyncClipboard.clipboardItem set to true, the answer can be found at nikouusitalo.com.
And here is my working code (tested on Firefox 102).
const clipboardItem = new
ClipboardItem({'text/html': new Blob([html],
{type: 'text/html'}),
'text/plain': new Blob([html],
{type: 'text/plain'})});
navigator.clipboard.write([clipboardItem]).
then(_ => console.log("clipboard.write() Ok"),
error => alert(error));
Make sure you try pasting it into a rich text editor such as gmail and not to a plain text/markdown editor such as stackoverflow.

How do I get HTML Markup for createRange() in Firefox

I am currently using code similar to this:
try {
// IE ONLY
var theElement = "myElementName";
window.frames[theElement].focus();
var selection = window.frames[theElement].document.selection.createRange();
alert ( selection.htmlText );
} catch(e) {
var selection = window.frames[theElement].document.getSelection();
alert ( selection );
}
As you can see, I am accessing a node from an iframe (no fun already). I am definitely in new territory here, so am sure there are more issues to arise, but right now, I am trying to get Firefox to give me the same result as IE.
In IE, I can access the HTML code of the selection by using the (apparently IE-only) htmlText property of the object returned by createRange(). What I am looking for is the Firefox equivalent to that (or a function that I can use to give me the same result).
Anyone know how to do this?

This works in Firefox 2 and later (untested in earlier versions):
var selection = window.frames[theElement].getSelection();
var range = selection.getRangeAt(0);
var div = document.createElement("div");
div.appendChild(range.cloneContents());
alert(div.innerHTML);