jQuery replace marked text

Question

I am trying to replace specific highlighted(marked) text from element.

This is how I get the highlighted text so far:

var markArea = $('.ElementText textarea').get(0);
var text     = markArea.value.substring(markArea.selectionStart, markArea.selectionEnd);

So if I have something like this in the textarea: "apple banana apple orange" and mark the third word (apple) I want to replace exactly what I have marked without any other occurrences of "apple" in the textarea.

Is there a way to specify the start and end area where the code should look for replacement in the string?

@Andrew, You are rocking. You have edit the question within one min. Very nice — Anirudha Gupta, Jul 09 '12 at 16:56
if you can find the position then http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_charat.asp will be useful in your case. — Anirudha Gupta, Jul 09 '12 at 16:58
Check this question, it is almost the same: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/717224/how-to-get-selected-text-in-textarea — Sindre, Jul 09 '12 at 17:00
Oh you mean the user selected the text in the textarea and you want to remove that text selection. or am I still wrong? lol — epascarello, Jul 09 '12 at 17:03
possible duplicate of [Textarea Selection](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/401593/textarea-selection) — Hogan, Jul 09 '12 at 17:04

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 09 '12 at 17:07

You could try something like this,

var markArea = $('.ElementText textarea').get(0);
var startStr = markArea.value.substring(0,markArea.selectionStart);
var endStr   = markArea.value.substring(markArea.selectionEnd);
var text     = startStr +"REPLACEMENT VALUE HERE"+ endStr;    
$('.ElementText textarea').val(text);

I'd play with this a little it might be off by 1 on either the startStr or endStr (I always mess that up :/ ) but this should do what you're looking to do.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 09 '12 at 17:14

3

Wrote this before the above answer, but I'll keep it because it is just a different way of writing the code/doesn't use jQuery:

function replaceAtIndex(str,s,e,rep){
   return str.slice(0,s) + rep + str.slice(e);
}

markArea.value = replaceAtIndex(markArea.value,markArea.selectionStart,markArea.selectionEnd,"replacement");

answered Jul 09 '12 at 17:14

bokonic

1,751
10
12

personally think your answer was better then mine. Much cleaner and as a function it can be managed easier. gj – Dan Jul 09 '12 at 17:30

jQuery replace marked text

2 Answers2