Question

I heard that you can’t copy text (in the browser) without using something like Flash; so, is there a way to select text by using an anchor and JavaScript or jQuery.

<p>Text to be copied</p>

<a>Copy Text Above</a>

Answer 1

Given the following example html:

<div class="announcementInfoText">
    <p class="copyToClipboard">
        <a id="selectAll">Select All Text</a>
    </p>
    <textarea ID="description" class="announcementTextArea">This is some sample text that I want to be select to copy to the clipboard</textarea>
</div>

you can select the text within the textarea with the following jQuery:

$("#selectAll").click(function () {
    $(this).parents(".announcementInfoText").children("textarea").select();
});

Now that the text “This is some sample text that I want to be select to copy to the clipboard” is selected, you can simply hit Ctrl+C and the text is copied to the clipboard.