How to set caret(cursor) position in contenteditable element (div)?

Question

I have this simple HTML as an example:

  text text text

  text text text

  text text         


        
      

Answer 1

In most browsers, you need the Range and Selection objects. You specify each of the selection boundaries as a node and an offset within that node. For example, to set the caret to the fifth character of the second line of text, you'd do the following:

function setCaret() {
    var el = document.getElementById("editable")
    var range = document.createRange()
    var sel = window.getSelection()
    
    range.setStart(el.childNodes[2], 5)
    range.collapse(true)
    
    sel.removeAllRanges()
    sel.addRange(range)
}

  text text text
text text text
text text text



focus

IE < 9 works completely differently. If you need to support these browsers, you'll need different code.

jsFiddle example: http://jsfiddle.net/timdown/vXnCM/