jQuery Set Cursor Position in Text Area

Question

How do you set the cursor position in a text field using jQuery? I\'ve got a text field with content, and I want the users cursor to be positioned at a certain offset when

Answer 1

I do realize that this is a very old post, but I thought that I should offer perhaps a simpler solution to update it using only jQuery.

function getTextCursorPosition(ele) {   
    return ele.prop("selectionStart");
}

function setTextCursorPosition(ele,pos) {
    ele.prop("selectionStart", pos + 1);
    ele.prop("selectionEnd", pos + 1);
}

function insertNewLine(text,cursorPos) {
    var firstSlice = text.slice(0,cursorPos);
    var secondSlice = text.slice(cursorPos);

    var new_text = [firstSlice,"\n",secondSlice].join('');

    return new_text;
}

Usage for using ctrl-enter to add a new line (like in Facebook):

$('textarea').on('keypress',function(e){
    if (e.keyCode == 13 && !e.ctrlKey) {
        e.preventDefault();
        //do something special here with just pressing Enter
    }else if (e.ctrlKey){
        //If the ctrl key was pressed with the Enter key,
        //then enter a new line break into the text
        var cursorPos = getTextCursorPosition($(this));                

        $(this).val(insertNewLine($(this).val(), cursorPos));
        setTextCursorPosition($(this), cursorPos);
    }
});

I am open to critique. Thank you.

UPDATE: This solution does not allow normal copy and paste functionality to work (i.e. ctrl-c, ctrl-v), so I will have to edit this in the future to make sure that part works again. If you have an idea how to do that, please comment here, and I will be happy to test it out. Thanks.