I'm working on an application which needs to insert text into a contenteditable="true"
div (a Draftjs
based textfield to be precise).
Now I am aware that Draft.js uses react and that it should be used that way, but in this case, the application already exists and this is a third party electron app that works with it.
I'm working on in-line notification replying on macOS, so I need that reply text to be pasted inside the draftJS field, however, when I do so using:
document.querySelector('div[contenteditable="true"]').focus();
document.execCommand('insertText', false, 'message');
I was able to make it work using:
const event = document.createEvent('TextEvent');
event.initTextEvent('textInput', true, true, window, 'message', 0, locale);
but this API is deprecated and doesn't work properly if the message contains an emoji.
Is there any way to do this that doesn't cause an error?
I found out that the new API that is supposed to replace initTextEvent is just new Event()
(see docs), but I can't find out if it supports textInput events.
To play around with it you can just go to https://draftjs.org/ and play with it in chrome dev tools.
I would really appreciate some help here as I don't know what to do to make it work anymore. Also, I know people are a fan of jquery, but I'd prefer a native js solution (although any solution is welcome).
edit:
Please note: I'm not using react, the input field I want to modify (draftjs) is using react and I want to input text into it using native js.
edit 2:
For anyone else coming across this issue, I wanted to insert text into the Facebook messenger text field (which uses Draftjs).
I managed to find a working workaround.
It does use the deprecated API (event.initTextEvent
), but it's the only way that I've found that works, even with emoji. Please do post an answer if you have a better solution to this.
It works like this:
async function sendReply(message: string): Promise<void> {
const inputField = document.querySelector('[contenteditable="true"]') as HTMLElement;
if (inputField) {
const previousMessage = inputField.textContent;
// Send message
inputField.focus();
await insertMessageText(message, inputField);
(await elementReady('._30yy._38lh._39bl')).click();
// Restore (possible) previous message
if (previousMessage) {
insertMessageText(previousMessage, inputField);
}
}
}
function insertMessageText(text: string, inputField: HTMLElement): void {
// Workaround: insert placeholder value to get execCommand working
if (!inputField.textContent) {
const event = document.createEvent('TextEvent');
event.initTextEvent('textInput', true, true, window, '_', 0, '');
inputField.dispatchEvent(event);
}
document.execCommand('selectAll', false, undefined);
document.execCommand('insertText', false, text);
}
This is typescript code, so you might want to change it up to use js.
It works by inserting a placeholder value inside the textField using event.initTextEvent
, and then replacing that text with:
document.execCommand('selectAll', false, undefined);
document.execCommand('insertText', false, 'text');
tested in Chrome: Version 71.0.3578.98