Calculate Position of Selected Text JavaScript/Jquery

Calculate Position of selected text javascript/JQuery?

Here's some simple, naive code to do this that may well do the job for your use case. It does not take into account any text that may be made invisible (either by CSS or by being inside a or element, for example) and may have browser discrepancies (IE versus everything else) with line breaks, and takes no account of collapsed whitespace (such as 2 or more consecutive space characters collapsing to one visible space on the page). However, it does work for your example in all major browsers.

Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/UuDpL/2/

Code:

function getSelectionCharOffsetsWithin(element) {
    var start = 0, end = 0;
    var sel, range, priorRange;
    if (typeof window.getSelection != "undefined") {
        range = window.getSelection().getRangeAt(0);
        priorRange = range.cloneRange();
        priorRange.selectNodeContents(element);
        priorRange.setEnd(range.startContainer, range.startOffset);
        start = priorRange.toString().length;
        end = start + range.toString().length;
    } else if (typeof document.selection != "undefined" &&
            (sel = document.selection).type != "Control") {
        range = sel.createRange();
        priorRange = document.body.createTextRange();
        priorRange.moveToElementText(element);
        priorRange.setEndPoint("EndToStart", range);
        start = priorRange.text.length;
        end = start + range.text.length;
    }
    return {
        start: start,
        end: end
    };
}

alert( getSelectionCharOffsetsWithin(document.body).start );

Getting selected text position

The easiest way is to insert a temporary marker element at the start or end of the selection and get its position. I've demonstrated how to do this before on Stack Overflow: How can I position an element next to user text selection?

How to find index of selected text in getSelection() using javascript?

What you are looking for is available inside object returned by window.getSelection()

document.getElementById('ip').addEventListener('mouseup',function(e){        var txt = this.innerText;        var selection = window.getSelection();        var start = selection.anchorOffset;        var end = selection.focusOffset;        if (start >= 0 && end >= 0){         console.log("start: " + start);         console.log("end: " + end);        }});

<div id="ip">YOLO Cobe</div>

Javascript find occurance position of selected text in a div

Assuming that the contents of the <div> are guaranteed to be a single text node, this is not too hard. The following does not work in IE < 9, which does not support Selection and Range APIs. If you need support for these browsers, I can provide code for this particular case, or you could use my Rangy library.

Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/timdown/VxTfu/

Code:

if (window.getSelection) {
    var sel = window.getSelection();
    var div = document.getElementById("content");

    if (sel.rangeCount) {
        // Get the selected range
        var range = sel.getRangeAt(0);

        // Check that the selection is wholly contained within the div text
        if (range.commonAncestorContainer == div.firstChild) {
            // Create a range that spans the content from the start of the div
            // to the start of the selection
            var precedingRange = document.createRange();
            precedingRange.setStartBefore(div.firstChild);
            precedingRange.setEnd(range.startContainer, range.startOffset);

            // Get the text preceding the selection and do a crude estimate
            // of the number of words by splitting on white space
            var textPrecedingSelection = precedingRange.toString();
            var wordIndex = textPrecedingSelection.split(/\s+/).length;
            alert("Word index: " + wordIndex);
        }
    }
}

Get selected text position and place an element next to it

You could position a marker span at the end of the selection, get its coordinates using jQuery, place your button at those coordinates and remove the marker span.

The following should get you started:

var markSelection = (function() {
    var markerTextChar = "\ufeff";
    var markerTextCharEntity = "";

    var markerEl, markerId = "sel_" + new Date().getTime() + "_" + Math.random().toString().substr(2);

    var selectionEl;

    return function(win) {
        win = win || window;
        var doc = win.document;
        var sel, range;
        // Branch for IE <= 8 
        if (doc.selection && doc.selection.createRange) {
            // Clone the TextRange and collapse
            range = doc.selection.createRange().duplicate();
            range.collapse(false);

            // Create the marker element containing a single invisible character by creating literal HTML and insert it
            range.pasteHTML('<span id="' + markerId + '" style="position: relative;">' + markerTextCharEntity + '</span>');
            markerEl = doc.getElementById(markerId);
        } else if (win.getSelection) {
            sel = win.getSelection();
            range = sel.getRangeAt(0).cloneRange();
            range.collapse(false);

            // Create the marker element containing a single invisible character using DOM methods and insert it
            markerEl = doc.createElement("span");
            markerEl.id = markerId;
            markerEl.appendChild( doc.createTextNode(markerTextChar) );
            range.insertNode(markerEl);
        }

        if (markerEl) {
            // Lazily create element to be placed next to the selection
            if (!selectionEl) {
                selectionEl = doc.createElement("div");
                selectionEl.style.border = "solid darkblue 1px";
                selectionEl.style.backgroundColor = "lightgoldenrodyellow";
                selectionEl.innerHTML = "<- selection";
                selectionEl.style.position = "absolute";

                doc.body.appendChild(selectionEl);
            }

            // Find markerEl position http://www.quirksmode.org/js/findpos.html
        var obj = markerEl;
        var left = 0, top = 0;
        do {
            left += obj.offsetLeft;
            top += obj.offsetTop;
        } while (obj = obj.offsetParent);

            // Move the button into place.
            // Substitute your jQuery stuff in here
            selectionEl.style.left = left + "px";
            selectionEl.style.top = top + "px";

            markerEl.parentNode.removeChild(markerEl);
        }
    };
})();

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