Return HTML from a user-selected text

I have the following, very simple html page:

<html>
    <head>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        function alertSelection()
        {
            var selection = window.getSelection();
            var txt = selection.toString();
            alert(txt);
        }
    </script>
    </head>
    <body>
        This is <span style="background-color:black;color:white">the</span> text.
        <div style="background-color:green;width:30px;height:30px;margin:30px"
            onmouseover="alertSelection()">
    </body>
</html>

When I select the entire first line and mouseover the square, I get an alert with "This is the text.".

How would I fix this so the span tag or any other selected HTML isn't stripped out of the alert message?

edit: I'm looking specifically for how to get the full HTML from window.getSelection(). The alert dialog was just how I was attempting to validate the code. I'm only concerned about this working in Safari.

Solution 1:

Here's a function that will get you HTML corresponding to the current selection in all major browsers:

function getSelectionHtml() {
    var html = "";
    if (typeof window.getSelection != "undefined") {
        var sel = window.getSelection();
        if (sel.rangeCount) {
            var container = document.createElement("div");
            for (var i = 0, len = sel.rangeCount; i < len; ++i) {
                container.appendChild(sel.getRangeAt(i).cloneContents());
            }
            html = container.innerHTML;
        }
    } else if (typeof document.selection != "undefined") {
        if (document.selection.type == "Text") {
            html = document.selection.createRange().htmlText;
        }
    }
    return html;
}

alert(getSelectionHtml());

Solution 2:

Use Rangy: https://github.com/timdown/rangy

Cross-browser range and selection library.

Check out the demos here: http://rangy.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/demos/index.html

Return HTML from a user-selected text

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

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