onselect

OnSelect refers to the onselect event in web development. It is fired when a user selects text within a text input or textarea. It is part of the DOM event model and can be handled through HTML attributes, standard DOM methods, or framework-specific event properties.

In plain HTML and JavaScript, the onselect event can be listened to by attaching a handler to the input or textarea element. The event is typically triggered when the text selection changes due to user interaction. The event object is provided to the handler, and the element that fired the event can be accessed via the event target. To inspect what was selected, you commonly read the element’s value together with the selectionStart and selectionEnd properties and compute the substring that lies between those indices.

In React and other modern frameworks, onSelect is exposed as a component property on input and textarea elements. The handler receives a synthetic event, and you can obtain the selected text similarly from event.currentTarget.value and the currentTarget’s selectionStart and selectionEnd. This enables responsive behavior such as updating UI based on the selected portion of text.

Notes and considerations: onselect specifically relates to text selection within inputs or textareas and is distinct from change or input events, which respond to value edits. Browser support is broad in modern environments. For contenteditable elements, selection changes are typically handled via other events such as selectionchange rather than onselect.