Question

what is the best way to do this in jQuery? This should be a fairly common use case.

1. User selects text in a textarea
2. He clicks on a link
3. The text in the link replaces the selected text in the textarea

Any code will be much appreciated – I am having some issues with part 3.

Answer 1

Here’s how you can do it, in all major browsers. I’ve also got a jQuery plug-in that includes this functionality. With that, the code would be

$("your_textarea_id").replaceSelectedText("NEW TEXT");

Here’s a full stand-alone solution:

function getInputSelection(el) {
    var start = 0, end = 0, normalizedValue, range,
        textInputRange, len, endRange;

    if (typeof el.selectionStart == "number" && typeof el.selectionEnd == "number") {
        start = el.selectionStart;
        end = el.selectionEnd;
    } else {
        range = document.selection.createRange();

        if (range && range.parentElement() == el) {
            len = el.value.length;
            normalizedValue = el.value.replace(/\r\n/g, "\n");

            // Create a working TextRange that lives only in the input
            textInputRange = el.createTextRange();
            textInputRange.moveToBookmark(range.getBookmark());

            // Check if the start and end of the selection are at the very end
            // of the input, since moveStart/moveEnd doesn't return what we want
            // in those cases
            endRange = el.createTextRange();
            endRange.collapse(false);

            if (textInputRange.compareEndPoints("StartToEnd", endRange) > -1) {
                start = end = len;
            } else {
                start = -textInputRange.moveStart("character", -len);
                start += normalizedValue.slice(0, start).split("\n").length - 1;

                if (textInputRange.compareEndPoints("EndToEnd", endRange) > -1) {
                    end = len;
                } else {
                    end = -textInputRange.moveEnd("character", -len);
                    end += normalizedValue.slice(0, end).split("\n").length - 1;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    return {
        start: start,
        end: end
    };
}

function replaceSelectedText(el, text) {
    var sel = getInputSelection(el), val = el.value;
    el.value = val.slice(0, sel.start) + text + val.slice(sel.end);
}

var el = document.getElementById("your_textarea");
replaceSelectedText(el, "[NEW TEXT]");