Question

I have a textbox that when I put on focus I want the cursor to goto the end of the textbox.

The solution that keeps coming up is just

this.value = this.value

I have tried this with a simple method onclick:

function InputClicked(element) {
    element.className = "inputfocused";
    element.value = element.value;
}

but the strange this with this, it seems to goto the end and then jump to the start of the textbox.

Answer 1

You have to focus element AND set caret position

This JSFiddle shows you how it works. jQuery has been used for simplicity in this example, but it can be completely omitted if one desires so. setSelectionRange function is a DOM function anyway.

In general it does this:

input.focus();
input.setSelectionRange(inputValueLength, inputValueLength);

Obtaining input and its value length can be obtained using DOM functionality or using library functions (as in jQuery).

Do we need input value length?

I haven’t tested in other browsers but running in Chrome it allows to set a larger than actual position and caret will be positioned at the end. So something like:

input.setSelectionRange(1000,1000);

will work as expected (provided your text is shorter than 1000 characters. 🙂

Note: This function isn’t supported in IE8 and older. All latest versions of most used browsers support it. For older versions of IE resort to text ranges.