getSelection() confusion in AS for Safari

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
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#1

Hi all,

I’m trying to programmatically get the selected text in Safari’s frontmost page.

This site http://www.quirksmode.org/js/selected.html# has a working Javascript (select something and click his “Get Selection” button).

Now, for my code. If I code:


tell application "Safari"
	do JavaScript "alert(window.getSelection());" in front document
end tell

I get a nice alert box in Safari with the correct text displayed. However, I just want the text, not the alert.

So I code


tell application "Safari"
	do JavaScript "window.getSelection();" in front document
end tell

Or many variants thereof, I always get the null string back.

I have tried everything I can think of. Does anyone know why these two code blocks give different results? Is there some sort of “convert selection object to string” that I am missing here, since window.getSelection() presumably returns a selection object.

Many thanks if anyone has any suggestions to try.

#2

Hi, johnny.

I don’t know much about JavaScript, but this works for me:

tell application "Safari"
	set selectedText to (do JavaScript "\"\"+window.getSelection();" in front window)
end tell

I suspect that the selection function returns an array, which I believe I’ve concatenated to an empty string (as can be done in AppleScript). If no JavaScript experts come up with anything better, this should at least get you functioning…

#3

Thanks so much!! Works perfectly. I would never have thought of that.

Cheers,
johnny