Capture text selection in Google Docs

Question

I\'m writing a Chrome extension that captures the user text selection and sends the selected text to Google search.

manifest.json

{
         


        

Answer 1

Thanks to Mr. Java Wolf answer.

I created a fork of his project, and then rewrite his project completely to adopt it for my own needs. Core concepts were keeped, but now it is easier to use because it supports both IIFE and CJS.

So, here is google-docs-utils package:

• GitHub - https://github.com/Amaimersion/google-docs-utils
• NPM - https://www.npmjs.com/package/google-docs-utils

You can use it with Node.js or directly in browser:

• Node.js: npm install google-docs-utils
• Browser: https://unpkg.com/google-docs-utils@latest/dist/iife/index.js

Here is the code which solves your task using google-docs-utils package:

const linesData = GoogleDocsUtils.getSelection();
let selectionData = null;

for (const lineData of linesData) {
    if (lineData) {
        selectionData = lineData;

        // we handle only single selection
        break;
    }
}

if (selectionData) {
    console.log(selectionData.selectedText);
}