Question

I’m developing a firefox extension. So, when the user selects a text and then right-clicks in order for some context menus to appear, i should be able to retrieve from that selection a list with all the links contained in it. How am i able to do that? i see that currentDocument.getSelection() only retrieves simple text not the whole HTML data.

Thank you TIM . I have one more problem though!
This is how i use your function . Where i call it the text is bolded.

The problem is that when i select a text and right the text that activates your function, if the cursor is over normal text i get the links allright; if the cursor is over LINK TEXT (the actual link) i get and undefined response. Why might this happen?

window.addEventListener("contextmenu", function(e) { 
    getSelectionLink();
}, false);


function getSelectionLink() {
var SelectionText = "";
var trywindow = false;

var start = 0;
var stop = 0;

var focusedElement = document.commandDispatcher.focusedElement;

if(focusedElement && null != focusedElement)
{
    try
    {   
        alert(focusedElement.value);
    }
    catch(e)
    {
        trywindow = true;
    }
}
else
{
    trywindow = true;
}

if(trywindow)
{
    var focusedWindow = document.commandDispatcher.focusedWindow;
    var winWrapper = new XPCNativeWrapper(focusedWindow, 'document');
    var Selection = winWrapper.getSelection();

    alert(getSelectedElements(winWrapper, "a"));
    //parseSelection(Selection);
}
}

Answer 1

Here’s a function that will get you a list of all elements with a particular tag name that are wholly or partially selected. It works in all major browsers except IE < 9:

function getSelectedElements(win, tagName) {
    var sel = win.getSelection(), selectedElements = [];
    var range, elementRange, elements;
    if (sel.getRangeAt && sel.rangeCount) {
        elementRange = win.document.createRange();
        for (var r = 0; r < sel.rangeCount; ++r) {
            range = sel.getRangeAt(r);
            containerEl = range.commonAncestorContainer;
            if (containerEl.nodeType != 1) {
                containerEl = containerEl.parentNode;
            }
            if (containerEl.nodeName.toLowerCase() == tagName) {
                selectedElements.push(containerEl);
            } else {
                elements = containerEl.getElementsByTagName(tagName);
                for (var i = 0; i < elements.length; ++i) {
                    elementRange.selectNodeContents(elements[i]);
                    if (elementRange.compareBoundaryPoints(range.END_TO_START, range) < 1
                            && elementRange.compareBoundaryPoints(range.START_TO_END, range) > -1) {
                        selectedElements.push(elements[i]);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        elementRange.detach();
    }
    return selectedElements;
}

console.log( getSelectedElements(currentWindow, "a") );