Get element node at caret position (in contentEditable)

Question

Let\'s say I have some HTML code like this:

   
Some heading text here
   
Some text here&l         


        

Answer 1

Firstly, think about why you're doing this. If you're trying to stop users from editing certain elements, just set contenteditable to false on those elements.

However, it is possible to do what you ask. The code below works in Safari 4 and will return the node the selection is anchored in (i.e. where the user started to select, selecting "backwards" will return the end instead of the start) – if you want the element type as a string, just get the nodeName property of the returned node. This works for zero-length selections as well (i.e. just a caret position).

function getSelectionStart() {
   var node = document.getSelection().anchorNode;
   return (node.nodeType == 3 ? node.parentNode : node);
}