How can I tell the owner of a selection?

Question

How can I tell who the parent node of a selection is?

I'm getting a selection with:

        var userSelection;
        if (window.getSelection) {
            userSelection = window.getSelection();
        }
        else if (document.selection) { 
            userSelection = document.selection.createRange();
        }

        var selectedText = userSelection;
        if (userSelection.text)
            selectedText = userSelection.text;

But how can i tell who's the parent node of the selection? That is, if the whole selection is from withing a single div I want to know that div.

possible duplicate of [How can I check the node of the selection using Range object in javascript ?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4204822/how-can-i-check-the-node-of-the-selection-using-range-object-in-javascript) — Andrew Marshall, Mar 28 '11 at 23:44

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 28 '11 at 23:45

0

Try $(':contains(' + selectedText + ')').parent(). Does that work?

answered Mar 28 '11 at 23:45

GregL

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1

True, but if all you have is the selected text, with no context, how else are you going to locate it on the page? – GregL Mar 29 '11 at 00:04

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 29 '11 at 08:57

The following will return the parent element of the selection in all major browsers, with the following caveats:

Getting the parent node instead (which could be of any type but is most commonly a text node) is easy on most browsers but tricky in IE < 9. If you need to do this, there are libraries such as my own Rangy that provide DOM Range and Selection support for all major browsers.
The function below only considers the first Range within the selection. Firefox is the only major browser that supports multiple selections; only the first is considered.

Code:

function getSelectionContainerElement() {
    var container = null;
    if (typeof window.getSelection != "undefined") {
        var sel = window.getSelection();
        if (sel.rangeCount) {
            container = sel.getRangeAt(0).commonAncestorContainer;
            if (container.nodeType != 1) {
                container = container.parentNode;
            }
        }
    } else if (typeof document.selection != "undefined" && document.selection.type != "Control") {
        container = document.selection.createRange().parentElement();
    }
    return container;
}

How can I tell the owner of a selection?

2 Answers2

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