Insert text before and after selection in textarea using javascript

Question

How to insert text before and after selection in textarea using javascript? The selection takes place in the textarea field of the HTML form

Answer 1

Try the following:

var selectionText = yourTextarea.value.substr(yourTextarea.selectionStart, yourTextarea.selectionEnd);
yourTextarea.value = "Text before" + selectionText + "Text after";

If you want to perform a search + replace, then the following code will do the trick (in browsers not IE)

var textBeforeSelection = yourTextarea.value.substr(0, yourTextarea.selectionStart);
var textAfterSelection = yourTextarea.value.substr(yourTextarea.selectionEnd, yourTextarea.value.length);
yourTextarea.value = textBeforeSelection + " new selection text " + textAfterSelection;

Answer 2

A simple script that works both in IE, MFF, and GC, where myField is an object reference. Build several scripts found over the Internet.

function insertAtCursor(myField, myValueBefore, myValueAfter) {

    if (document.selection) {

        myField.focus();
        document.selection.createRange().text = myValueBefore + document.selection.createRange().text + myValueAfter;


    } else if (myField.selectionStart || myField.selectionStart == '0') {

        var startPos = myField.selectionStart;
        var endPos = myField.selectionEnd;
        myField.value = myField.value.substring(0, startPos)+ myValueBefore+ myField.value.substring(startPos, endPos)+ myValueAfter+ myField.value.substring(endPos, myField.value.length);

    } 
}