CodeMirror: Set Focus at End of Line

By  on  

CodeMirror is a WYSIWYG-like editor that allows for rich text editing on a small scale, oftentimes used to allow Markdown editing, much like ReviewBoard uses it for.  One problem I've found, however, is that calling a CodeMirror instance's focus method put the cursor at the beginning of the input, which is annoying when there is input in the field.  In theory you'd always want to put the cursor at the end so that the user can continue adding to the text that's already there.

Here's a snippet that will set the cursor to the end of existing input:

cmInstance.focus();
// Set the cursor at the end of existing content
cmInstance.setCursor(cmInstance.lineCount(), 0);

You would think that there would be a method which would accomplish this task, or even have focus set the cursor to the end of input by default if the instance has existing text.  Anyways, this is the code that will put the cursor at the end of your CodeMirror input instance!

Recent Features

  • By
    Responsive and Infinitely Scalable JS Animations

    Back in late 2012 it was not easy to find open source projects using requestAnimationFrame() - this is the hook that allows Javascript code to synchronize with a web browser's native paint loop. Animations using this method can run at 60 fps and deliver fantastic...

  • By
    JavaScript Promise API

    While synchronous code is easier to follow and debug, async is generally better for performance and flexibility. Why "hold up the show" when you can trigger numerous requests at once and then handle them when each is ready?  Promises are becoming a big part of the JavaScript world...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Cross Browser CSS Box Shadows

    Box shadows have been used on the web for quite a while, but they weren't created with CSS -- we needed to utilize some Photoshop game to create them.  For someone with no design talent, a.k.a me, the need to use Photoshop sucked.  Just because we...

  • By
    CSS calc

    CSS is a complete conundrum; we all appreciate CSS because of its simplicity but always yearn for the language to do just a bit more. CSS has evolved to accommodate placeholders, animations, and even click events. One problem we always thought...

Discussion

  1. Harika

    HI David,

    I was able to set cursor at end of the code mirror lines on tab with your code, but after that i want to get out of code mirror window and should move focus to next button.With above code, not able to get focus out of code mirror, can you suggest a way to do that? Thanks.

    This is how i am writing it, also set tabindex=0 for next button available.

     _editor.setOption('extraKeys', {
            Tab(cm) {
              cm.focus();
              cm.setCursor(cm.lineCount(), 0);
            },
          });

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!