I have a requirement for my web app to allow the user to Print

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Asked: May 20, 20262026-05-20T07:16:29+00:00 2026-05-20T07:16:29+00:00

I have a requirement for my web app to allow the user to Print

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I have a requirement for my web app to allow the user to “Print Selected Only”. In other words, a user selects text and potentially images and then clicks this option. I’ve seen examples of getting selected text with Javascript, but haven’t found a solution for getting the selected html itself.

As an example if I have a document like so:

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
    <p>A bunch of text</p>
    <img src="someimage.jpg" />
    <p>Even more text</p>
</body>
</html>

If user highlights the image and the second paragraph, I’d want the javascript to return:

<img src="someimage.jpg" />
<p>Even more text</p>

Is this possible and how would one go about doing it?

Edit: I ended up going with a js library called Rangy for this.

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1 Answer

Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-05-20T07:16:29+00:00

Here is some code I found somewhere but I lost the actual link and this seems to work.

http://jsfiddle.net/Y4BBq/

<html lang="en">
    <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
    <title>The serialized HTML of a selection in Mozilla and IE</title>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    function getHTMLOfSelection () {
      var range;
      if (document.selection && document.selection.createRange) {
        range = document.selection.createRange();
        return range.htmlText;
      }
      else if (window.getSelection) {
        var selection = window.getSelection();
        if (selection.rangeCount > 0) {
          range = selection.getRangeAt(0);
          var clonedSelection = range.cloneContents();
          var div = document.createElement('div');
          div.appendChild(clonedSelection);
          return div.innerHTML;
        }
        else {
          return '';
        }
      }
      else {
        return '';
      }
    }
    </script>
    </head>
    <body>
    <div>
        <p>Some text to <span class="test">test</span> the selection on.
            Kibology for <b>all</b><br />. All <i>for</i> Kibology.
    </p>
    </div>
    <form action="">
    <p>
    <input type="button" value="show HTML of selection"
           onclick="this.form.output.value = getHTMLOfSelection();">
    </p>
    <p>
    <textarea name="output" rows="5" cols="80"></textarea>
    </p>
    </form>
    </body>
    </html>