jQuery Drag & Drop into a Text Area

Question

Using jQuery, and looking to let user drag a placeholder into a text area.

Each placeholder is a which has a class=\'placeholder\'

Answer 1

I don't think you can use the textarea directly as droppable thus I made a little hack which on drag-start positions a div directly over the textarea. The div is the actual droppable which then inserts the text of the draggable into the textarea

Check here for a demo

http://jsbin.com/egefi (http://jsbin.com/egefi/edit for the code)

It inserts at current textcaret position I don't think inserting at current mouse cursor position is even possible.

function insertAtCaret(area, text) {
    //... adapted from http://www.scottklarr.com/topic/425/how-to-insert-text-into-a-textarea-where-the-cursor-is/
}

$(document).ready(function() {
    var options = {
        accept: "span.placeholder",       
        drop: function(ev, ui) {
            insertAtCaret($("textarea#main_text").get(0), ui.draggable.eq(0).text());
        }
    };

    $("span.placeholder").draggable({
        helper:'clone',
        start: function(event, ui) {
            var txta = $("textarea#main_text");
            $("div#pseudodroppable").css({
                position:"absolute",
                top:txta.position().top,
                left:txta.position().left,
                width:txta.width(),
                height:txta.height()
            }).droppable(options).show();
        },
        stop: function(event, ui) {
            $("div#pseudodroppable").droppable('destroy').hide();
        }
    });
});