Convert HTML to plain text in contentEditable

Question

I have a contentEditable and I strip the formatting of pasted content on('paste') by catching the event. Then I focus a textarea, paste the content in there, and copy the value. Pretty much the answer from here. The problem is that I can’t do this:

$("#paste-output").text($("#area").val());

because that would replace my entire content with the pasted text. So I need to paste the content at caret position. I put together a script that does that:

pasteHtmlAtCaret($("#area").val());

// pastes CTRL+V content at caret position
function pasteHtmlAtCaret(html) {
  var sel, range;
  if (window.getSelection) {
    sel = window.getSelection();
    if (sel.getRangeAt && sel.rangeCount) {
      range = sel.getRangeAt(0);
      range.deleteContents();
      var el = document.createElement("div");
      el.innerHTML = html;
      var frag = document.createDocumentFragment(), node, lastNode;
      while ((node = el.firstChild)) {
        lastNode = frag.appendChild(node);
      }
      range.insertNode(frag);

      if (lastNode) {
        range = range.cloneRange();
        range.setStartAfter(lastNode);
        range.collapse(true);
        sel.removeAllRanges();
        sel.addRange(range);
      }
    }
  } else if (document.selection && document.selection.type != "Control") {
    document.selection.createRange().pasteHTML(html);
  }
}

The only problem is that it pastes HTML content, at caret position using the html variable. How can I transform that into plain text? I tried adding the jQuery .text(html) to variable without luck. Something like this might help:

el.textContent||el.innerText;

Any ideas or a better solution? Thanks!

---

EDIT: Thanks to the answers below I modified my code and solved the issue. I basically copied the value of textarea into a div and grabbed only its .text():

// on paste, strip clipboard from HTML tags if any
$('#post_title, #post_content').on("paste", function() {
    var text = $('<div>').html($("#area").val()).text();
    pasteHtmlAtCaret(text);
  }, 20);
});

Answer 1

1. Create an external div,
2. Put your html in that div,
3. Copy the text from that div
4. Insert it at the cursor's position.