Question

In JavaScript, it’s possible to programmatically select text in an input or textarea element. You can focus an input with ipt.focus(), and then select its contents with ipt.select(). You can even select a specific range with ipt.setSelectionRange(from,to).

My question is: is there any way to do this in a contenteditable element too?

I found that I can do elem.focus(), to put the caret in a contenteditable element, but subsequently running elem.select() doesn’t work (and nor does setSelectionRange). I can’t find anything on the web about it, but maybe I’m searching for the wrong thing…

By the way, if it makes any difference, I only need it to work in Google Chrome, as this is for a Chrome extension.

Answer 1

If you want to select all the content of an element (contenteditable or not) in Chrome, here’s how. This will also work in Firefox, Safari 3+, Opera 9+ (possibly earlier versions too) and IE 9. You can also create selections down to the character level. The APIs you need are DOM Range (current spec is DOM Level 2, see also MDN) and Selection, which is being specified as part of a new Range spec (MDN docs).

function selectElementContents(el) {
    var range = document.createRange();
    range.selectNodeContents(el);
    var sel = window.getSelection();
    sel.removeAllRanges();
    sel.addRange(range);
}

var el = document.getElementById("foo");
selectElementContents(el);