Get selected text in text area

[natty]

hi all,

having a bit of difficulty with this one..
i have been a read through the quirksmode article on this topic - using window.getSelection - but as far as FF is concerned the text within a text area, doesnt seem to count as text that can be selected.. which is a bit of a bugger, as that is what i want to do.
IE is happy grabbing text from anywhere it seems with that function..

what i am really trying to do is to allow someone to select some text in a textarea, and wrap it with something.

any ideas?

any help, as ever, much appreciated.

nat

[RonPK]

Mozilla and FF work with properties called selectionStart and selectionEnd. To wrap things around the selection in a textarea, use something like this:

if (typeof(myArea.selectionStart) != "undefined") { 
 var begin = myArea.value.substr(0, myArea.selectionStart); 
 var selection = myArea.value.substr(myArea.selectionStart, myArea.selectionEnd - myArea.selectionStart); 
 var end = myArea.value.substr(myArea.selectionEnd); 
 myArea.value = begin + text1 + selection + text2 + end; 
}

text1 and tag2 could be tags like <b> and </b>, and myArea refers to the textarea.

[Bernard Marx]

Nice, Ron. I reckon I should play with Moz text selection a little more, so I played around with yours (ooer), and came up with this:

function wrap(txta,x,y)
{
    if(txta.selectionStart==undefined) return;
    var chars = txta.value.split("");
    chars.splice(txta.selectionStart,0,x);
    chars.splice(txta.selectionEnd+1,0,y);
    txta.value = chars.join("");
}

[natty]

cheers guys..
finally ended up with this..
in case anyone is in need of something similar..
didnt do too much sniffing for browsers.. still

function addArticleCode(t){ 
//crappy browser sniffer 
var isFF = false; 
var textSelected = false; 
if(navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf("firefox") > 0){ 
isFF = true; 
} 
var myArea = document.getElementById("body"); 
var begin,selection,end; 
if (isFF == true){ 
if (myArea.selectionStart!= undefined) {  
begin = myArea.value.substr(0, myArea.selectionStart);  
selection = myArea.value.substr(myArea.selectionStart, myArea.selectionEnd - myArea.selectionStart);  
end = myArea.value.substr(myArea.selectionEnd); 
if (selection.length > 0){ 
textSelected = true; 
} 
} 
}else{ 
if (window.getSelection){ 
selection = window.getSelection(); 
}else if (document.getSelection){ 
selection = document.getSelection(); 
}else if (document.selection){ 
selection = document.selection.createRange().text; 
} 
var startPos = myArea.value.indexOf(selection); 
if (startPos!= 0){ 
var endPos = myArea.value.indexOf(selection) + selection.length; 
begin = myArea.value.substr(0,startPos); 
end = myArea.value.substr(endPos, myArea.value.length); 
textSelected = true; 
} 
} 
if(textSelected == true){ 
switch (t){ 
case "code": 
startTag = "[xcode]"; 
endTag = "[/xcode]\n"; 
break; 
case "bold": 
startTag = "[xb]"; 
endTag = "[/xb]"; 
break; 
case "italics": 
startTag = "[xi]"; 
endTag = "[/xi]"; 
break; 
case "link": 
startTag = "[xlink url=#*$!#*$!]"; 
endTag = "[/xlink]"; 
break; 
} 
myArea.value = begin + startTag + selection + endTag + end; 
myArea.focus(); 
}else{ 
alert("No text selected.\nNo tags added"); 
} 
}