Develop Reference

Highlight text in javascript like Evernote Web Clipper

My current solution is:
Get selected html (include text and html tag), namely: selText
highlightText = <span>selText</span>
Find selText in innerHTML of the body or document (or the element which the mouse dragged in)
Replace with highlightText
But if the document is: a a a a a a and user selects the last a. My function will highlight the first or all a.
Any suggestion?
Thank you.

i think your question is duplicated, anyway i just searched the internet and found this article.
Below the final code to achieve what you ask
function highlightSelection() {
var selection;
//Get the selected stuff
if(window.getSelection)
selection = window.getSelection();
else if(typeof document.selection!="undefined")
selection = document.selection;
//Get a the selected content, in a range object
var range = selection.getRangeAt(0);
//If the range spans some text, and inside a tag, set its css class.
if(range && !selection.isCollapsed)
{
if(selection.anchorNode.parentNode == selection.focusNode.parentNode)
{
var span = document.createElement('span');
span.className = 'highlight-green';
range.surroundContents(span);
}
}
}
I also found this library rangy that is an helper you can use to select text but only works with jquery so i prefer the first vanilla-js solution.
var el = $("<span></span>");
el.text(rangy.getSelection().getRangeAt(0).toString());
rangy.getSelection().getRangeAt(0).deleteContents();
rangy.getSelection().getRangeAt(0).insertNode(el.get(0));
rangy.getSelection().getRangeAt(0).getSelection().setSingleRange(range);
On Range and User Selection
You have to select range using Document.createRange that return a Range object before you can use Range.surroundContents(), you could create a range this way.
var range = document.createRange();
range.setStart(startNode, startOffset);
range.setEnd(endNode, endOffset);
In practice you follow this guide to understand range and selection tecniques.
The most important point is contained in this code
var userSelection;
if (window.getSelection) {
userSelection = window.getSelection();
}
else if (document.selection) { // should come last; Opera!
userSelection = document.selection.createRange();
}
After this you can use
userSelection.surroundContents()

Select some text in html page with JS

I would like to select text automatically (I mean something with the Ranges) in some div to in order to unit test my script in JS.
My problem is that I want to be able to select text in different ways here are some examples of selection (selection represented by [ for start and ] for end)
<div>[ here I select all the text in the div ]</div
<div>This is just a <b>piece [ of</b> selection]</div>
<div><ul><li>Also with [list</li><li>And why not select many items ?</li></ul><p>With a p ?] but not the complete p !</p>
I want to do that because the user can do that and so I should test every cases of use. (If I don't, the unit test is quite useless...)
Do you have an idea about how to select what I want ? (if possible...)

I found this on the web.
This a function that when called on a particular HTML element will auto-select all of its inner text. The function works on elements such as INPUT (text), TEXTAREA, DIV, SPAN, TD, and PRE. Cross browser compatible.
var autoSelect = function(event) {
var event = event || window.event,
elem = event.target || event.srcElement,
tag = (elem.tagName || "").toLowerCase(),
sel, range;
if (tag === "textarea" || tag === "input") {
try {
elem.select();
} catch(e) {
// May be disabled or not selectable
}
} else if (window.getSelection) { // Not IE
sel = window.getSelection();
range = document.createRange();
range.selectNodeContents(elem);
sel.removeAllRanges();
sel.addRange(range);
} else if (document.selection) { // IE
document.selection.empty();
range = document.body.createTextRange();
range.moveToElementText(elem);
range.select();
}
};
To attach this function to an element:
document.getElementById("foobar").onclick = autoSelect;

You can do it using a regex:
var divStr = document.getElementById('yourDiv').innerHTML;
var matchs = /\[(.*?)\]/.exec(divStr);
console.log(matchs[1]);
We get the inner html string, then parses everything is between [ ], and finnaly get the grouped content.

Javascript find occurance position of selected text in a div

I have a string with a word five times.if i selected forth hello it should return 4
<div id="content">hello hai hello hello hello</div>
getting selected text script
<script>
if(window.getSelection){
t = window.getSelection();
}else if(document.getSelection){
t = document.getSelection();
}else if(document.selection){
t =document.selection.createRange().text;
}
</script>
If am selecting hai it should return 1.
If am selecting hello hai it should return 1. please help.

Assuming that the contents of the <div> are guaranteed to be a single text node, this is not too hard. The following does not work in IE < 9, which does not support Selection and Range APIs. If you need support for these browsers, I can provide code for this particular case, or you could use my Rangy library.
Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/timdown/VxTfu/
Code:
if (window.getSelection) {
var sel = window.getSelection();
var div = document.getElementById("content");
if (sel.rangeCount) {
// Get the selected range
var range = sel.getRangeAt(0);
// Check that the selection is wholly contained within the div text
if (range.commonAncestorContainer == div.firstChild) {
// Create a range that spans the content from the start of the div
// to the start of the selection
var precedingRange = document.createRange();
precedingRange.setStartBefore(div.firstChild);
precedingRange.setEnd(range.startContainer, range.startOffset);
// Get the text preceding the selection and do a crude estimate
// of the number of words by splitting on white space
var textPrecedingSelection = precedingRange.toString();
var wordIndex = textPrecedingSelection.split(/\s+/).length;
alert("Word index: " + wordIndex);
}
}
}

You'll need to use the Range capabilities of the DOM. Here is how to get the currently selected range:
var currentRange = window.getSelection().getRangeAt(0);
From there currentRage.startOffset will tell you the position of your selection within the file. So you'll need to compare that with the start range of your element:
var myContent = document.getElementById('content');
var divRange = document.createRange ();
divRange.selectNodeContents (myContent);
Now you can compare the divRange.startOffset with your selection startOffset and determine which one you're on.

Finding indices of highlighted text

I'm trying to save information about text that a user has highlighted in a webpage. Currently I'm using the getSelection method shown below:
var txt = '';
if (window.getSelection){txt = window.getSelection();}
else if (document.getSelection){txt = document.getSelection();}
else if (document.selection){txt = document.selection.createRange().text;}
else return;
to retrieve the highlighted text. Then I'm searching through the entire text body and storing the indices of the highlighted text. The getSelection method only returns what text is highlighted so the problem is that if the highlighted text appears multiple times in the text body, the search could find the wrong repeat of the text and thus save the wrong indices.
Any ideas how to ensure that I'm saving the right indices?
Thanks!

QuirksMode has an article about this.
You'd probably be interested in this code:
var userSelection;
if (window.getSelection) {
userSelection = window.getSelection();
}
else if (document.selection) { // should come last; Opera!
userSelection = document.selection.createRange();
}
var rangeObject = getRangeObject(userSelection);
function getRangeObject(selectionObject) {
if (selectionObject.getRangeAt)
return selectionObject.getRangeAt(0);
else { // Safari!
var range = document.createRange();
range.setStart(selectionObject.anchorNode,selectionObject.anchorOffset);
range.setEnd(selectionObject.focusNode,selectionObject.focusOffset);
return range;
}
}

boundary-points of a range does not meet specific requirements

I am writing a script on which the user needs to be able to select some text which is sent via ajax to the backend script for further process.
I can select plain text nodes fine or text nodes that have bold, italic or underlined text inside it.
For e.g
<p>This is <strong>some</strong> cool <em>italic</em> text, <u>really!</u></p>
So, that works, that is cool.
However, the issue is, if the text node starts with hsome bold, italic or underlined text OR even headings it outputs the following error on firefox console:
The boundary-points of a range does not meet specific requirements." code: "1 range.surroundContents($('<span...wAnno_'+newLen+'"></span>').get(0));
The error is output when the user selects something like:
<strong>Mark says</strong> Hi
OR
<em>Mark says</em> Hi
OR
<u>Mark says</u> Hi
The same error outputs even if a text is enclosed inside heading tags e.g <h2>test</h2>
My code looks like:
var select = window.getSelection();
var parents = $(select.focusNode).parents('.the-content');
if($(select.focusNode).parent().hasClass('.highlighted')) {
alert('This text is already highlighted');
} else {
for(var i = 0; i < select.rangeCount; i++) {
var range = select.getRangeAt(i);
range.surroundContents($('<span class="newHighlight" id="newHigh_'+newLen+'"></span>').get(0));
}
}
var selectedText = select.toString();
I need help with fixing this.
Help with the code will be awesome.

The problem is that the surroundContents method of Range can't work on a Range where the start and end boundaries lie within different elements, because surrounding the contents of such a Range within an element would not produce valid HTML. If changing the background colour of your Range is all you need to do, you could use the following trick with document.execCommand:
function highlight(colour) {
var range, sel;
if (window.getSelection) {
// Non-IE case
sel = window.getSelection();
if (sel.getRangeAt) {
range = sel.getRangeAt(0);
}
document.designMode = "on";
if (range) {
sel.removeAllRanges();
sel.addRange(range);
}
// Use HiliteColor since some browsers apply BackColor to the whole block
if ( !document.execCommand("HiliteColor", false, colour) ) {
document.execCommand("BackColor", false, colour);
}
document.designMode = "off";
} else if (document.selection && document.selection.createRange) {
// IE case
range = document.selection.createRange();
range.execCommand("BackColor", false, colour);
}
}
Otherwise, you'll need to walk through the text nodes within the range and surround each with a <span>, which is not trivial. I've been working on a cross-browser range and selection library that includes a module for applying a CSS class to the contents of a selection or Range at http://code.google.com/p/rangy/, although that module is a few days away from being documented and released.