Contenteditable div caret position [duplicate]

Question

I'm finding tons of good, cross-browser answers on how to set the caret position in a contentEditable element, but none on how to get the caret position in the first place.

What I want to do is know the caret position within a div on keyup. So, when the user is typing text, I can, at any point, know the caret position within the contentEditable element.

<div id="contentBox" contentEditable="true"></div>

$('#contentbox').keyup(function() { 
    // ... ? 
});

Answer 1

The following code assumes:

• There is always a single text node within the editable <div> and no other nodes
• The editable div does not have the CSS white-space property set to pre

If you need a more general approach that will work content with nested elements, try this answer:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/4812022/96100

Code:

function getCaretPosition(editableDiv) {
  var caretPos = 0,
    sel, range;
  if (window.getSelection) {
    sel = window.getSelection();
    if (sel.rangeCount) {
      range = sel.getRangeAt(0);
      if (range.commonAncestorContainer.parentNode == editableDiv) {
        caretPos = range.endOffset;
      }
    }
  } else if (document.selection && document.selection.createRange) {
    range = document.selection.createRange();
    if (range.parentElement() == editableDiv) {
      var tempEl = document.createElement("span");
      editableDiv.insertBefore(tempEl, editableDiv.firstChild);
      var tempRange = range.duplicate();
      tempRange.moveToElementText(tempEl);
      tempRange.setEndPoint("EndToEnd", range);
      caretPos = tempRange.text.length;
    }
  }
  return caretPos;
}

#caretposition {
  font-weight: bold;
}

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div id="contentbox" contenteditable="true">Click me and move cursor with keys or mouse</div>
<div id="caretposition">0</div>
<script>
  var update = function() {
    $('#caretposition').html(getCaretPosition(this));
  };
  $('#contentbox').on("mousedown mouseup keydown keyup", update);
</script>

Answer 2

A few wrinkles that I don't see being addressed in other answers:

1. the element can contain multiple levels of child nodes (e.g. child nodes that have child nodes that have child nodes...)
2. a selection can consist of different start and end positions (e.g. multiple chars are selected)
3. the node containing a Caret start/end may not be either the element or its direct children

Here's a way to get start and end positions as offsets to the element's textContent value:

// node_walk: walk the element tree, stop when func(node) returns false
function node_walk(node, func) {
  var result = func(node);
  for(node = node.firstChild; result !== false && node; node = node.nextSibling)
    result = node_walk(node, func);
  return result;
};

// getCaretPosition: return [start, end] as offsets to elem.textContent that
//   correspond to the selected portion of text
//   (if start == end, caret is at given position and no text is selected)
function getCaretPosition(elem) {
  var sel = window.getSelection();
  var cum_length = [0, 0];

  if(sel.anchorNode == elem)
    cum_length = [sel.anchorOffset, sel.extentOffset];
  else {
    var nodes_to_find = [sel.anchorNode, sel.extentNode];
    if(!elem.contains(sel.anchorNode) || !elem.contains(sel.extentNode))
      return undefined;
    else {
      var found = [0,0];
      var i;
      node_walk(elem, function(node) {
        for(i = 0; i < 2; i++) {
          if(node == nodes_to_find[i]) {
            found[i] = true;
            if(found[i == 0 ? 1 : 0])
              return false; // all done
          }
        }

        if(node.textContent && !node.firstChild) {
          for(i = 0; i < 2; i++) {
            if(!found[i])
              cum_length[i] += node.textContent.length;
          }
        }
      });
      cum_length[0] += sel.anchorOffset;
      cum_length[1] += sel.extentOffset;
    }
  }
  if(cum_length[0] <= cum_length[1])
    return cum_length;
  return [cum_length[1], cum_length[0]];
}