Question

How can I select a part of the text and process by jQuery? For example, I have a text as

<div id="test">This is an example text here</div>

I select few words (not the whole div) with mouse, and want to show these words (part of #test) in

<div id="target"></div>

Answer 1

Here’s how. The following works in all major browsers, including IE 6.

function getSelectedText() {
    var selectedText = "", sel;
    if (window.getSelection) {
        selectedText = "" + window.getSelection();
    } else if ( (sel = document.selection) && sel.type == "Text") {
        selectedText = sel.createRange().text;
    }
    return selectedText;
}

$('#target').text( getSelectedText() );