While this works for selecting it in IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera, it won't let you edit it by clicking a second time in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Not entirely sure, but I think this may be due to those 3 browsers re-issuing a focus event even though the field already has focus thus never allowing you to actually insert the cursor (since you're selecting it again), whereas in IE and Opera it appears it isn't doing that so the focus event didn't get fired again and thus the cursor gets inserted.
I found a better fix in this Stack post that doesn't have that problem and works in all browsers.
Just preventing default on mouseup causes the text selection to be ON at all times. The MOUSEUP event is responsible to clear the text selection. However, by preventing its default behaviour, you are unable to deselect the textusing the mouse.
To avoid that and get the text selection to work again, you can set a flag on FOCUS, read it from MOUSEUP and reset it so future MOUSEUP events will work as expected.
$("#souper_fancy").focus(function() {
$(this).select();
//set flag for preventing MOUSEUP event....
$this.data("preventMouseUp", true);
});
$("#souper_fancy").mouseup(function(e) {
var preventEvent = $this.data("preventMouseUp");
//only prevent default if the flag is TRUE
if (preventEvent) {
e.preventDefault();
}
//reset flag so MOUSEUP event deselect the text
$this.data("preventMouseUp", false);
});
Because there is flickering when you use setTimeout, there is another event based solution.
This way the 'focus' event attach the 'mouseup' event and the event handler detach itself again.
function selectAllOnFocus(e) {
if (e.type == "mouseup") { // Prevent default and detach the handler
console.debug("Mouse is up. Preventing default.");
e.preventDefault();
$(e.target).off('mouseup', selectAllOnFocus);
return;
}
$(e.target).select();
console.debug("Selecting all text");
$(e.target).on('mouseup', selectAllOnFocus);
}
Use setSelectionRange() inside of a callback to requestAnimationFrame():
$(document).on('focus', '._selectTextOnFocus', (e) => {
var input = e.currentTarget;
var initialType = e.currentTarget.type;
requestAnimationFrame(() => {
// input.select() is not supported on iOS
// If setSelectionRange is use on a number input in Chrome it throws an exception,
// so here we switch to type text first.
input.type = "text";
input.setSelectionRange(0, Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER || 9999);
input.type = initialType;
});
});
It is necessary to wait using requestAnimationFrame before selecting the text, otherwise the element isn't correctly scrolled into view after the keyboard comes up on iOS.