Programmatically selecting partial text in an input field
How can I programmatically select a specific range of text in an HTML input field? (I don't want to select the entire field, just a subset)
Also, how can I determine the currently selected range in a field?
Answer
Here's how to select a portion of a text box (range select) and get the selected text:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title> Test </title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload = function() {
var message = document.getElementById('message');
// Select a portion of text
createSelection(message, 0, 5);
// get the selected portion of text
var selectedText = message.value.substring(message.selectionStart, message.selectionEnd);
alert(selectedText);
};
function createSelection(field, start, end) {
if( field.createTextRange ) {
var selRange = field.createTextRange();
selRange.collapse(true);
selRange.moveStart('character', start);
selRange.moveEnd('character', end);
selRange.select();
field.focus();
} else if( field.setSelectionRange ) {
field.focus();
field.setSelectionRange(start, end);
} else if( typeof field.selectionStart != 'undefined' ) {
field.selectionStart = start;
field.selectionEnd = end;
field.focus();
}
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<input type="text" name="message" id="message" value="Hello World" />
</body>
</html>