How to get the Highlighted/Selected text in JavaScript?
There may be a need to find out the text selected/highlighted by the user. It can be done very easily using the window and document objects and their properties. Handling selected text is different for different browsers. The ways to get selected text are shown below:
Example-1: By using window.getSelection property
function selection(){
if (window.getSelection)
return window.getSelection();
}
Example 2: By using document.getSelection property
function selection(){
if (document.getSelection)
return document.getSelection();
}
Example 3: By using document.selection property
function selection(){
if (document.selection)
return document.selection.createRange().text;;
}
Time to try out the code. Run the code, select a text and press the button to show the selected text:
Example:
<html> <head> <title>Selected Text</title></head> <body> <center> <h1 style=color:green> GeeksforGeeks </h1> <script> // Function to get the Selected Text function getSelectedText() { var selectedText = ''; // window.getSelection if (window.getSelection) { selectedText = window.getSelection(); } // document.getSelection else if (document.getSelection) { selectedText = document.getSelection(); } // document.selection else if (document.selection) { selectedText = document.selection.createRange().text; } else return; // To write the selected text into the textarea document.testform.selectedtext.value = selectedText; } </script> <p>Select any part of this sentence and press the button</p> <!--Button to invoke the function to get the selected text--> <input type="button" value="Get Selection" onmousedown="getSelectedText()"> <!--Form to show the selected text as output--> <form name="testform"> <textarea name="selectedtext" rows="5" cols="20"></textarea> </form> </center></body> </html> |
Output:
Before:
After:
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