Programmatically select SOME text in a textarea or input

Asked Feb 19 '18 at 15:54

Active Feb 19 '18 at 15:56

Viewed 110 times

I'm looking for a way to programmatically select specific text inside of an input or textarea.

E.g.

$('#my-input').val(); // "This is some text"

I'm aware that .select() will select all contents in the input field.

Any way to programmatically select just the word "text" with no user interaction?

asked Feb 19 '18 at 15:54

Don Townsend

how do we know to look for 'text'? Is it that specific string or something else? – Robert Feb 19 '18 at 15:56
You'll need to be more specific about how, and what, you want to select. Are you looking for a specific word, set of words, etc? – Brett DeWoody Feb 19 '18 at 15:56
First find where it is (`strpos`) then set `area = document.getElementById('my-input'); area.selectionStart = ___; area.selectionEnd = ___;` – Niet the Dark Absol Feb 19 '18 at 15:56
impossible if no limitation/specification. but you can get such as the last word, last N letters, or one specific word of a selected list of words.... – ild flue Feb 19 '18 at 15:58
Awesome. Wasn't even aware of setSelectionRange - thanks @trincot. – Don Townsend Feb 19 '18 at 15:59
"text" could be anything, but is just a specific substring that we're looking for. – Don Townsend Feb 19 '18 at 15:59
@NiettheDarkAbsol @trincot both are great approaches. Just need to use `indexOf` to get the string position first and then set the selection. Thanks! – Don Townsend Feb 19 '18 at 16:05
If you know the word, do you really need to select it? Or is knowing the word is present in the field good enough? – Brett DeWoody Feb 19 '18 at 16:05

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