Get DOM text node from point?

Question

Just like I can get an element from a point with document.elementFromPoint or document.getElementFromPoint, is it possible to somehow get a text node if the point is at a text node? I guess if at least I could get the text node's position and size I could then figure out which of them contains the point. But then DOM nodes don't have position properties. Is it possible to do this at all?

Answer 1

Here is an implementation that works in all current browsers: https://github.com/nuxodin/q1/blob/master/q1.dom.js

document.betaNodeFromPoint = function(x, y){
    var el = document.elementFromPoint(x, y);
    var nodes = el.childNodes;
    for ( var i = 0, n; n = nodes[i++];) {
        if (n.nodeType === 3) {
            var r = document.createRange();
            r.selectNode(n);
            var rects = r.getClientRects();
            for ( var j = 0, rect; rect = rects[j++];) {
                if (x > rect.left && x < rect.right && y > rect.top && y < rect.bottom) {
                    return n;
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return el;
};

Answer 2

For Firefox, you should use document.caretPositionFromPoint

Here's a greap demo: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/document.caretPositionFromPoint

For Chrome and Edge, try document.caretRangeFromPoint(x,y)