Is there a simple js function I can use to replace the current document's selection with some html of mine?
For instance say the document contains a <p>AHAHAHA</p>
somewhere and user selects the 1st "ha" text chunk.
Now I want to replace this with something like: <span><font color="red">hoho</font></span>
When I google for *javascript replace selection * I can't get a simple straightforward answer!
To replace all occurrences of a substring in a string by a new one, you can use the replace() or replaceAll() method: replace() : turn the substring into a regular expression and use the g flag. replaceAll() method is more straight forward.
The replace() method searches a string for a value or a regular expression. The replace() method returns a new string with the value(s) replaced. The replace() method does not change the original string.
The basic concept of selection is Range, that is essentially a pair of “boundary points”: range start and range end. A Range object is created without parameters: let range = new Range(); Then we can set the selection boundaries using range.
Yes. The following will do it in all major browsers, with an option to select the inserted content afterwards as requested in the comments (although this part is not implemented for IE <= 8):
Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/bXsWQ/147/
Code:
function replaceSelection(html, selectInserted) {
var sel, range, fragment;
if (typeof window.getSelection != "undefined") {
// IE 9 and other non-IE browsers
sel = window.getSelection();
// Test that the Selection object contains at least one Range
if (sel.getRangeAt && sel.rangeCount) {
// Get the first Range (only Firefox supports more than one)
range = window.getSelection().getRangeAt(0);
range.deleteContents();
// Create a DocumentFragment to insert and populate it with HTML
// Need to test for the existence of range.createContextualFragment
// because it's non-standard and IE 9 does not support it
if (range.createContextualFragment) {
fragment = range.createContextualFragment(html);
} else {
// In IE 9 we need to use innerHTML of a temporary element
var div = document.createElement("div"), child;
div.innerHTML = html;
fragment = document.createDocumentFragment();
while ( (child = div.firstChild) ) {
fragment.appendChild(child);
}
}
var firstInsertedNode = fragment.firstChild;
var lastInsertedNode = fragment.lastChild;
range.insertNode(fragment);
if (selectInserted) {
if (firstInsertedNode) {
range.setStartBefore(firstInsertedNode);
range.setEndAfter(lastInsertedNode);
}
sel.removeAllRanges();
sel.addRange(range);
}
}
} else if (document.selection && document.selection.type != "Control") {
// IE 8 and below
range = document.selection.createRange();
range.pasteHTML(html);
}
}
Example:
replaceSelection('<span><font color="red">hoho</font></span>', true);
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