How Can I Retrieve the Caret Position in a Text Input Field?

Retrieving Caret Position within a Text Input Field

Want to know how to get the cursor position from an input field? This article will provide several solutions, including an easy-to-integrate jQuery plugin.

jQuery plugin

To get the cursor position using jQuery plugin, follow these steps:

• Install a jQuery plugin such as Caret. js.
• Reference the plugin script in the page.
• Use $("#myinput").caretPosition() method to get the cursor position.

Other solutions

If you don’t want to use the jQuery plugin, you can use the following solutions:

Native JavaScript

This method is based on field.selectionStart Properties:

function doGetCaretPosition(field) {
  return field.selectionStart;
}

Readme functions

This solution provides wider compatibility, including IE and Firefox:

function doGetCaretPosition(field) {
  var iCaretPos = 0;

  // IE support
  if (document.selection) {
    field.focus();
    var oSel = document.selection.createRange();
    oSel.moveStart('character', -field.value.length);
    iCaretPos = oSel.text.length;
  }

  // Firefox support
  else if (field.selectionStart || field.selectionStart == '0') {
    iCaretPos = field.selectionDirection=='backward' ? field.selectionStart : field.selectionEnd;
  }

  return iCaretPos;
}

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