jquery: select text event

Question

is it possible that when user selected some text(non textarea nor input), jquery can call my callback to let me know which div's text is selected, and if the select focus is lost also call my callback?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Somewhat surprisingly, there's no simple way to do this. IE has a select event that is implemented on all elements but other browsers have never extended this beyond inputs. You'll have to handle keyup and mouseup events on the whole document, and even then, your callback may well be called when the selection hasn't actually changed.

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UPDATE 13 OCTOBER 2013

WebKit browsers have supported the selectionchange event on Document nodes for a couple of years. IE also supports this event back to version 5.5. Example:

document.onselectionchange = function() {
    console.log("Selection changed");
};

---

Here's a simple example:

function selectCallback(selectionParentElement) {
    console.log("Selecting, parent element is " + selectionParentElement.nodeName);
}

var mouseOrKeyUpHandler;

if (typeof window.getSelection != "undefined") {
    // Non-IE
    mouseOrKeyUpHandler = function() {
        var sel = window.getSelection();
        if (sel.rangeCount > 0) {
            var range = sel.getRangeAt(0);
            if (range.toString()) {
                var selParentEl = range.commonAncestorContainer;
                if (selParentEl.nodeType == 3) {
                    selParentEl = selParentEl.parentNode;
                }
                selectCallback(selParentEl);
            }
        }
    };
} else if (typeof document.selection != "undefined") {
    // IE
    mouseOrKeyUpHandler = function() {
        var sel = document.selection;
        if (sel.type == "Text") {
            var textRange = sel.createRange();
            if (textRange.text != "") {
                selectCallback(textRange.parentElement());
            }
        }
    };
}

document.onmouseup = mouseOrKeyUpHandler;
document.onkeyup = mouseOrKeyUpHandler;