window.getSelection() of textarea not working in firefox?

Question

I am trying to get selection text on HTML page.

I use below code, and window.getSelection() on textarea seams not work in firefox, but works fine in Google Chrome.

I am using firefox 24, and chrome 27.

Here is a sample: http://jsfiddle.net/AVLCY/

HTML:

<div>Text in div</div>
<textarea>Hello textarea</textarea>
<div id='debug'></div>

JS:

$(document).on('mouseup','body',function(){
   $("#debug").html("You select '" + getSelectionText() + "'");
});

function getSelectionText() {
    if (window.getSelection) {
        try {
            // return "" in firefox
            return window.getSelection().toString();
        } catch (e) {
            console.log('Cant get selection text')
        }
    } 
    // For IE
    if (document.selection && document.selection.type != "Control") {
        return document.selection.createRange().text;
    }
}

Refer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/717224/how-to-get-selected-text-in-textarea — Parkash Kumar, Dec 06 '13 at 08:56
This is due to a [Firefox bug filed in 2001](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85686) (yes, 14 years ago). — Dan Dascalescu, Sep 05 '15 at 19:29

score 22 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

22

It appears getSelection does not work on text selected in form fields due to this Firefox bug.

As explained in this answer, the workaround is to use selectionStart and selectionEnd instead.

Here is a modified example that works correctly:

http://jsfiddle.net/AVLCY/1/

edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

Community

1
1

answered Dec 06 '13 at 15:35

John Karahalis

3,369
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Is there any other solution for this problem? – Rajesh Choudhary Sep 12 '16 at 09:23
I changed the "textarea" to ":focus", so it works event if there is multiple textarea or input fields : http://jsfiddle.net/AVLCY/653/ – Thibault Mar 05 '18 at 11:18

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 28 '22 at 15:34

It's late 2022 and Firefox still has this weird bug. I went to the original Bug Report on BugZilla to get more info about this and found a workaround (kindly shared by user daniel.lee1ibm):

    //Workaround for Firefox bug 
    const selectedText = document.activeElement.value.substring(
        document.activeElement.selectionStart,
        document.activeElement.selectionEnd
      )

window.getSelection() of textarea not working in firefox?

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