TextUpdateEvent: selectionStart property

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

The TextUpdateEvent.selectionStart read-only property indicates the position of the end of the selection (or caret) within the text content of the editable region attached to the EditContext object.

Value

A Number.

Examples

Using textupdate to render the edited text and user selection

This example shows how to use the selectionStart property to render the selected text within a textupdate event handler.

css
#editor {
  height: 200px;
  background: #eee;
  color: black;
}

.selection {
  display: inline-block;
  vertical-align: bottom;
  background: blue;
  color: white;
  min-width: 2px;
  height: 3ex;
}
html
<div id="editor"></div>
js
const editorEl = document.getElementById("editor");
const editContext = new EditContext();
editorEl.editContext = editContext;

editContext.addEventListener("textupdate", (e) => {
  // Clear the current content.
  editorEl.innerHTML = "";

  const text = editContext.text;
  const { selectionStart, selectionEnd } = e;

  // Render the text before the selection.
  const textBefore = document.createElement("span");
  textBefore.textContent = text.substring(0, selectionStart);

  // Render the selected text, or caret.
  const textSelected = document.createElement("span");
  textSelected.classList.add("selection");
  textSelected.textContent = text.substring(selectionStart, selectionEnd);

  // Render the text after the selection.
  const textAfter = document.createElement("span");
  textAfter.textContent = text.substring(selectionEnd);

  editorEl.appendChild(textBefore);
  editorEl.appendChild(textSelected);
  editorEl.appendChild(textAfter);

  console.log(`Text before selection: ${textBefore.textContent}`);
  console.log(`Selected text: ${textSelected.textContent}`);
  console.log(`Text after selection: ${textAfter.textContent}`);
});

Specifications

Specification
EditContext API
# dom-textupdateevent-selectionstart

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser