Get caret position in contenteditable div including tags

Question

I have a contenteditable div in which I have multiple tags (br, b, u, i) and text and I need to get the caret position relative to the div, including all the tags.

For example:

<div id="h" contenteditable="true">abc<b>def<br>ghi</b>jkl</div>

If the cursor is between g and h, I need the caret position to be 14. The problem is that the found methods that use a treeWalker do not work in this case. The bold tag is not found... probably because it isn't closed. Also I have tried several methods but still no luck.

I need it to work in Firefox. Thank you.

Answer 1

Have you tried this? Get a range's start and end offset's relative to its parent container

Direct link to the jsfiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/TjXEG/1/

Function code:

function getCaretCharacterOffsetWithin(element) {
    var caretOffset = 0;
    if (typeof window.getSelection != "undefined") {
        var range = window.getSelection().getRangeAt(0);
        var preCaretRange = range.cloneRange();
        preCaretRange.selectNodeContents(element);
        preCaretRange.setEnd(range.endContainer, range.endOffset);
        caretOffset = preCaretRange.toString().length;
    } else if (typeof document.selection != "undefined" && document.selection.type != "Control") {
        var textRange = document.selection.createRange();
        var preCaretTextRange = document.body.createTextRange();
        preCaretTextRange.moveToElementText(element);
        preCaretTextRange.setEndPoint("EndToEnd", textRange);
        caretOffset = preCaretTextRange.text.length;
    }
    return caretOffset;
}

function showCaretPos() {
    var el = document.getElementById("test");
    var caretPosEl = document.getElementById("caretPos");
    caretPosEl.innerHTML = "Caret position: " + getCaretCharacterOffsetWithin(el);
}

document.body.onkeyup = showCaretPos;
document.body.onmouseup = showCaretPos;

Answer 2

just had to do this so there is some working solution (some testing may be required)

basic idea is to:

1. get textContent position using this method: Get caret (cursor) position in contentEditable area containing HTML content

2. iterate through innerHTML of an element to the textContent position

3. if html tag or entity is encountered, iterate through it until normal char, then continue

sample code here:

function getHTMLCaretPosition(element) {
var textPosition = getCaretPosition(element),
    htmlContent = element.innerHTML,
    textIndex = 0,
    htmlIndex = 0,
    insideHtml = false,
    htmlBeginChars = ['&', '<'],
    htmlEndChars = [';', '>'];


if (textPosition == 0) {
  return 0;
}

while(textIndex < textPosition) {

  htmlIndex++;

  // check if next character is html and if it is, iterate with htmlIndex to the next non-html character
  while(htmlBeginChars.indexOf(htmlContent.charAt(htmlIndex)) > -1) {
    // console.log('encountered HTML');
    // now iterate to the ending char
    insideHtml = true;

    while(insideHtml) {
      if (htmlEndChars.indexOf(htmlContent.charAt(htmlIndex)) > -1) {
        if (htmlContent.charAt(htmlIndex) == ';') {
          htmlIndex--; // entity is char itself
        }
        // console.log('encountered end of HTML');
        insideHtml = false;
      }
      htmlIndex++;
    }
  }
  textIndex++;
}

//console.log(htmlIndex);
//console.log(textPosition);
// in htmlIndex is caret position inside html
return htmlIndex;
}