Get contentEditable caret index position

Question

I\'m finding tons of good, crossbrowser anwers on how to SET the cursor or caret index position in a contentEditable element, but none on how to GET or find its

Answer 1

A straight forward way, that iterates through all the chidren of the contenteditable div until it hits the endContainer. Then I add the end container offset and we have the character index. Should work with any number of nestings. uses recursion.

Note: requires a poly fill for ie to support Element.closest('div[contenteditable]')

https://codepen.io/alockwood05/pen/vMpdmZ

function caretPositionIndex() {
    const range = window.getSelection().getRangeAt(0);
    const { endContainer, endOffset } = range;

    // get contenteditableDiv from our endContainer node
    let contenteditableDiv;
    const contenteditableSelector = "div[contenteditable]";
    switch (endContainer.nodeType) {
      case Node.TEXT_NODE:
        contenteditableDiv = endContainer.parentElement.closest(contenteditableSelector);
        break;
      case Node.ELEMENT_NODE:
        contenteditableDiv = endContainer.closest(contenteditableSelector);
        break;
    }
    if (!contenteditableDiv) return '';


    const countBeforeEnd = countUntilEndContainer(contenteditableDiv, endContainer);
    if (countBeforeEnd.error ) return null;
    return countBeforeEnd.count + endOffset;

    function countUntilEndContainer(parent, endNode, countingState = {count: 0}) {
      for (let node of parent.childNodes) {
        if (countingState.done) break;
        if (node === endNode) {
          countingState.done = true;
          return countingState;
        }
        if (node.nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE) {
          countingState.count += node.length;
        } else if (node.nodeType === Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
          countUntilEndContainer(node, endNode, countingState);
        } else {
          countingState.error = true;
        }
      }
      return countingState;
    }
  }