How to insert text into the textarea at the current cursor position?

Solution 1:

Use selectionStart/selectionEnd properties of the input element (works for <textarea> as well)

function insertAtCursor(myField, myValue) {
    //IE support
    if (document.selection) {
        myField.focus();
        sel = document.selection.createRange();
        sel.text = myValue;
    }
    //MOZILLA and others
    else if (myField.selectionStart || myField.selectionStart == '0') {
        var startPos = myField.selectionStart;
        var endPos = myField.selectionEnd;
        myField.value = myField.value.substring(0, startPos)
            + myValue
            + myField.value.substring(endPos, myField.value.length);
    } else {
        myField.value += myValue;
    }
}

Solution 2:

This snippet could help you with it in a few lines of jQuery 1.9+: http://jsfiddle.net/4MBUG/2/

$('input[type=button]').on('click', function() {
    var cursorPos = $('#text').prop('selectionStart');
    var v = $('#text').val();
    var textBefore = v.substring(0,  cursorPos);
    var textAfter  = v.substring(cursorPos, v.length);

    $('#text').val(textBefore + $(this).val() + textAfter);
});

Solution 3:

For the sake of proper Javascript

HTMLTextAreaElement.prototype.insertAtCaret = function (text) {
  text = text || '';
  if (document.selection) {
    // IE
    this.focus();
    var sel = document.selection.createRange();
    sel.text = text;
  } else if (this.selectionStart || this.selectionStart === 0) {
    // Others
    var startPos = this.selectionStart;
    var endPos = this.selectionEnd;
    this.value = this.value.substring(0, startPos) +
      text +
      this.value.substring(endPos, this.value.length);
    this.selectionStart = startPos + text.length;
    this.selectionEnd = startPos + text.length;
  } else {
    this.value += text;
  }
};