Selection API

Concepts and usage

To retrieve the current text range the user has selected, you can use the Window.getSelection() or Document.getSelection() method, storing the return value — a Selection object — in a variable for futher use.

Once your selection is in a variable, you perform a variety of operations on it, for example copying the selection to a text string using Selection.toString(), adding a range (as represented by a standard Range object) to the selection (or removing one) with Selection.addRange()/Selection.removeRange(), or changing the selection to be the entire contents of a DOM node using Selection.selectAllChildren().

You can run code in response to the selection being changed, or a new selection being started, using the GlobalEventHandlers.onselectionchange and GlobalEventHandlers.onselectstart event handlers.

Selection API interfaces

Selection

Represents the range of text selected by the user or the current position of the caret.

Extensions to other interfaces

Window.getSelection(), Document.getSelection()

Returns a Selection object representing the range of text selected by the user or the current position of the caret. Document.getSelection() is basically an alias of Window.getSelection().

GlobalEventHandlers.onselectstart

Represents the event handler that is called when a selectstart event is fired on the current object (i.e. when a new range of text is about to be selected by the user).

GlobalEventHandlers.onselectionchange

Represents the event handler that is called when a selectionchange event is fired on the current object (i.e. when the selected text range changes).

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
Selection API The definition of 'Selection' in that specification.	Working Draft	The Selection API specification is based on the HTML Editing APIs specification and focuses on the Selection-related functionality.
HTML Editing APIs The definition of 'Selection' in that specification.	Editor's Draft	Initial (older) definition, which is now outdated.

Browser compatibility

[1] The GlobalEventHandlers.onselectionchange and GlobalEventHandlers.onselectstart event handlers are suported as of Firefox 52.

See also

• Key quote generator: A simple demo showing typical usage of the Selection API to capture the current selection at any point and copy selections into a list (see it live also).
• The Range object.