How can I know when the user selects a paragraph?

Question

I want to perform an action when the user selects any text at the page. I tried something like this:

 var selObj;

       document.querySelector("p").onselect = function(){
       selObj = window.getSelection(); 
       var selectedText = selObj.toString();
       //action

But then I discovered that onselect is only for inputs and text areas, and found no other way of trying something like this.

EDIT:I know how to get the selected text, I need an event that is triggered when the text is selected!

maybe this could help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5379120/get-the-highlighted-selected-text — HAMED, Mar 02 '15 at 19:44
Not a duplicate. Linked question is how to select text. This question is how to fire an event when the user selects text. — CoderDennis, Mar 02 '15 at 19:54
It`s not a duplicate. The other question tells how to automatically select a text when an event occurs. This one is how to know when a text is selected. — Mr Guliarte, Mar 02 '15 at 20:09

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

0

You can bind a mouseup event to the paragraph("p") tag. Within that event handler, you can check:

document.selection.createRange().text

or

window.getSelection()

Also, you can check here javascript to get paragraph of selected text in web page.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

Community

1
1

answered Mar 02 '15 at 19:45

Akshat

479
4
9

roshan · Answer 2 · 2015-03-02T20:08:19.527

0

Use mouse events to capture the selection.

var paras = document.getElementsByClassName("para");

for (var i = 0; i < paras.length; i++) {
  paras[i].addEventListener('click', getSelected, false);
}

function selectElementContents(el) {

  return document.getSelection()||window.getSelection();

}

function getSelected() {

  var el = document.getElementById("selectedPara");
  alert(selectElementContents(el));

};

<p class="para">select me</p>
<p class="para">over me</p>
<p class="para">hey here</p>

edited Mar 02 '15 at 20:08

answered Mar 02 '15 at 19:56

roshan

2,410
2
25
37

And if i want it to apply to any paragraph, and not one with a specific ID? – Mr Guliarte Mar 02 '15 at 19:59

How can I know when the user selects a paragraph?

2 Answers2