Question

I have a page with a lot of textboxes. When someone clicks a link, i want a word or two to be inserted where the cursor is, or appended to the textbox which has the focus.

For example, if the cursor/focus is on a textbox saying ‘apple’ and he clicks a link saying ‘[email]’, then i want the textbox to say, ‘apple [e-mail]’.

How can I do this? Is this even possible, since what if the focus is on a radio/dropdown/non textbox element? Can the last focused on textbox be remembered?

Answer 1

Use this, from here:

function insertAtCaret(areaId, text) {
  var txtarea = document.getElementById(areaId);
  if (!txtarea) {
    return;
  }

  var scrollPos = txtarea.scrollTop;
  var strPos = 0;
  var br = ((txtarea.selectionStart || txtarea.selectionStart == '0') ?
    "ff" : (document.selection ? "ie" : false));
  if (br == "ie") {
    txtarea.focus();
    var range = document.selection.createRange();
    range.moveStart('character', -txtarea.value.length);
    strPos = range.text.length;
  } else if (br == "ff") {
    strPos = txtarea.selectionStart;
  }

  var front = (txtarea.value).substring(0, strPos);
  var back = (txtarea.value).substring(strPos, txtarea.value.length);
  txtarea.value = front + text + back;
  strPos = strPos + text.length;
  if (br == "ie") {
    txtarea.focus();
    var ieRange = document.selection.createRange();
    ieRange.moveStart('character', -txtarea.value.length);
    ieRange.moveStart('character', strPos);
    ieRange.moveEnd('character', 0);
    ieRange.select();
  } else if (br == "ff") {
    txtarea.selectionStart = strPos;
    txtarea.selectionEnd = strPos;
    txtarea.focus();
  }

  txtarea.scrollTop = scrollPos;
}

<textarea id="textareaid"></textarea>
<a href="#" onclick="insertAtCaret('textareaid', 'text to insert');return false;">Click Here to Insert</a>