to select a string from textarea

[ajithraj]

haii friends....
i want to select a particular string from textarea...i need it in javascript....
am using the tag <layout:textarea>
i did not need the whole ,but only a part...plzz help me...

[digital-ether]

haii friends....
i want to select a particular string from textarea...i need it in javascript....
am using the tag <layout:textarea>
i did not need the whole ,but only a part...plzz help me...

What markup language are you using?

In HTML a text area is just <textarea>.

You'll need a reference to the DOM node representing the text area, example:

textarea HTML

<textarea id="mytext">
</textarea>

select whats inside the textarea with JS

// get the textarea by its id
var txt = document.getElementById('mytext');
// theres the contents inside the textarea
var value = txt.value;

[digital-ether]

btw: once you have the value of the string, you need to do some matching with regex or similar to get what you want out of the string.

[ajithraj]

haii friends....
i want to select a particular string from textarea...i need it in javascript....
am using the tag <layout:textarea>
i did not need the whole ,but only a part...plzz help me...

thankzzz....
am using struts framework and <layout:textarea> is provided in it..
it has no property like "id" (ie..<textarea id="">)....
its syntax is like this..
<layout:textarea property="' key=""></layout:textarea>

"property" is used to represent the textarea ....

and wht is ment by "getElementById"..plzzz help

[digital-ether]

thankzzz....
am using struts framework and <layout:textarea> is provided in it..
it has no property like "id" (ie..<textarea id="">)....
its syntax is like this..
<layout:textarea property="' key=""></layout:textarea>

"property" is used to represent the textarea ....

and wht is ment by "getElementById"..plzzz help

You'll need to find out how to render HTML attributes using struts.

-----

Re: getElementById

Once the HTML is rendered on the page, the browser will create a DOM (Document Object Model) representation of the HTML for programmatic access from JavaScript.

The DOM is a W3C specification that models XML data as Objects. It is quite simple. Take for example some XML:

<root>
  <child1 id="child1_id">Im a child of root</child1>
  <child2 id="child2_id">
    <subchild1 id="subchild1_id">Im a child of child2</subchild1>
  </child2>
</root>

There are many ways to model this XML document. The model used in browsers is the DOM. So in JavaScript, if you have a reference to the XML Document you could traverse it and select elements (DOM nodes) as well as manipulate it.

If the XML document reference is: XMLDoc, then the root would be:

XMLDoc.documentElement;

<child1> would be:

XMLDoc.documentElement.firstChild

or

XMLDoc.documentElement.childNodes.item(0);

or

XMLDoc.documentElement.getElementsByTagName('child1').item(0);

or

XMLDoc.documentElement.getElementsById('child1_id');

(These are all example of DOM methods for selecting Nodes/Elements).

getElementsById('child1_id') selects the child Node/Element with the id attribute 'child1_id'.

In HTML, the DOM is already created by the browser and available through document object. So you can use document to select any HTML element using DOM methods.

document.getElementById('any_id_in_the_html_document');

[ajithraj]

kk thankzzz.....
is there any method in java like "selectionStart"

[digital-ether]

kk thankzzz.....
is there any method in java like "selectionStart"

Do you want to get the Text that the user has currently selected?

[ajithraj]

Do you want to get the Text that the user has currently selected?

yes......i need that....

[digital-ether]

yes......i need that....

See: http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/range_intro.html

[ajithraj]

See: http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/range_intro.html

thankzzzzzzz a lottt

[stephensac2000]

You are welcome community of scripters :)

function get_selection(the_id)
{
    var e = document.getElementById(the_id);
    
    //Mozilla and DOM 3.0
    if('selectionStart' in e)
    {
        var l = e.selectionEnd - e.selectionStart;
        return { start: e.selectionStart, end: e.selectionEnd, length: l, text: e.value.substr(e.selectionStart, l) };
    }
    //IE
    else if(document.selection)
    {
        e.focus();
        var r = document.selection.createRange();
        var tr = e.createTextRange();
        var tr2 = tr.duplicate();
        tr2.moveToBookmark(r.getBookmark());
        tr.setEndPoint('EndToStart',tr2);
        if (r == null || tr == null) return { start: e.value.length, end: e.value.length, length: 0, text: '' };
        var text_part = r.text.replace(/[\r\n]/g,'.'); //for some reason IE doesn't always count the \n and \r in the length
        var text_whole = e.value.replace(/[\r\n]/g,'.');
        var the_start = text_whole.indexOf(text_part,tr.text.length);
        return { start: the_start, end: the_start + text_part.length, length: text_part.length, text: r.text };
    }
    //Browser not supported
    else return { start: e.value.length, end: e.value.length, length: 0, text: '' };
}

function replace_selection(the_id,replace_str)
{
    var e = document.getElementById(the_id);
    selection = get_selection(the_id);
    var start_pos = selection.start;
    var end_pos = start_pos + replace_str.length;
    e.value = e.value.substr(0, start_pos) + replace_str + e.value.substr(selection.end, e.value.length);
    set_selection(the_id,start_pos,end_pos);
    return {start: start_pos, end: end_pos, length: replace_str.length, text: replace_str};
}

function set_selection(the_id,start_pos,end_pos)
{
    var e = document.getElementById(the_id);
    
    //Mozilla and DOM 3.0
    if('selectionStart' in e)
    {
        e.focus();
        e.selectionStart = start_pos;
        e.selectionEnd = end_pos;
    }
    //IE
    else if(document.selection)
    {
        e.focus();
        var tr = e.createTextRange();
        
        //Fix IE from counting the newline characters as two seperate characters
        var stop_it = start_pos;
        for (i=0; i < stop_it; i++) if( e.value[i].search(/[\r\n]/) != -1 ) start_pos = start_pos - .5;
        stop_it = end_pos;
        for (i=0; i < stop_it; i++) if( e.value[i].search(/[\r\n]/) != -1 ) end_pos = end_pos - .5;
        
        tr.moveEnd('textedit',-1);
        tr.moveStart('character',start_pos);
        tr.moveEnd('character',end_pos - start_pos);
        tr.select();
    }
    return get_selection(the_id);
}

function wrap_selection(the_id, left_str, right_str, sel_offset, sel_length)
{
    var the_sel_text = get_selection(the_id).text;
    var selection =  replace_selection(the_id, left_str + the_sel_text + right_str );
    if(sel_offset !== undefined && sel_length !== undefined) selection = set_selection(the_id, selection.start +  sel_offset, selection.start +  sel_offset + sel_length);
    else if(the_sel_text == '') selection = set_selection(the_id, selection.start + left_str.length, selection.start + left_str.length);
    return selection;
}

[fxm]

Before your contribution this thread was 2 1/2 years dead.
In the meantime tight code for this function has been posted several times.