designMode iFrame Get Cursor Position

Question

I want to get the cursor position of an editable iFrame (using designMode). Here is the code I have so far:

document.getElementById(\'iframe_id\').contentWin         


        

Answer 1

The following is based on this answer but is modified to work with selections in any document (such as one in an iframe). The same caveats about the naïveté of this approach laid out in that answer still apply.

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

Example usage:

var iframe = document.getElementById("foo");
var iframeBody = (iframe.contentDocument || iframe.contentWindow.document).body;
alert( getCaretCharacterOffsetWithin(iframeBody) );