Change cursor position in the contenteditable div after changing innerHTML

Question

I have a simple contenteditable div with some text in it. On onkeyup event i want to replace whole content (innerHTML) of the div based on regex.

For example,

HT

Answer 1

You know which text you are replacing. So you know the position of that text . there only you going to put the new text. Then also the position is same.After writing new html , yu can set cursor.

for eg

I dont undertsand the question

position of question is 5 an i replace it

I dont undertsand the answer

make the cursor position to 5

http://ajaxian.com/archives/javascript-tip-cross-browser-cursor-positioning

http://hartshorne.ca/2006/01/23/javascript_cursor_position/

http://geekswithblogs.net/svanvliet/archive/2005/03/24/textarea-cursor-position-with-javascript.aspx

Answer 2

I took this from another forum. It solved my problem.

Ok, I managed to work around it, here's the solution if anyone's interested:

Store the selection x, y:

Code:

cursorPos=document.selection.createRange().duplicate();
clickx = cursorPos.getBoundingClientRect().left; 
clicky = cursorPos.getBoundingClientRect().top;

Restore the selection:

Code:

cursorPos = document.body.createTextRange();
cursorPos.moveToPoint(clickx, clicky);
cursorPos.select();

You can see it working here:

http://www.tachyon-labs.com/sharpspell/

Answer 3

The problem is that you're updating the whole innerHTML, but only a small part of it is changing. You can't use a regular expression and o a bulk replace. You need to scan the div and look for matches, create text ranges out of them and wrap the content with the span. See http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/range_intro.html , Programmatically creating a Range.

However, I think this won't work if the cursor is in the text to be replaced, it's a start though.