How to get the selected text from text area in react?

Question

I am trying to make a text editor in react.Does anyone knows how to get the selected text from the textarea so that styles can be applied on the selected text.I know we can use window.getSelection in javascript but I am curious to know If any other methods are available for this functionality?

Answer 1

Yes there is a method to do this, specially in React. The way you should go to achieve this is as follow.

step 1:- use ref in your textarea ui element. like

     `<textarea
           className='html-editor'  
           ref='myTextarea' 
          value = {this.state.textareaVal}
          onChange={(event)=>{
                      this.setState({
                         textareaVal:event.target.value;
                      });
                   }}
       >
      </textarea>` 

step 2:- now you can access the DOM element,using react refs.

    let textVal = this.refs.myTextarea; 

step 3:- use selectionStart and selectionEnd :- using selectionStart and
selectionEnd you can get to know your start and end pointer
of selected text.which can be done as below;

        let cursorStart = textVal.selectionStart;
        let cursorEnd = textVal.selectionEnd;

now you have start and end index of your selected text.

step 4 :- use javascript substring function to get the selected text.

    this.state.textareaVal.substring(cursorStart,cursorEnd)