Selections and document positions

A selection identifies the target of the next edit: a caret, text range or complete node. It belongs to Editor state; the View projects it into visible highlighting.

Read the current selection

const { doc, selection } = editor.state.pm
const { from, to, empty } = selection
const text = doc.textBetween(from, to, '\n')

empty reports whether the range is collapsed; an ordinary caret has equal from and to positions. These boundaries follow document order. Read anchor / head when drag direction matters.

Positions use ProseMirror's document coordinates, rather than plain-text indexes or pixels. In a document containing one paragraph with Hello, the paragraph starts at 0 and text starts at 1; select the word with { from: 1, to: 6 }. Container boundaries also consume positions, so string lengths cannot locate arbitrary nested content. Use mounted View geometry to translate screen coordinates.

Set a text or node selection

editor.chain().setTextSelection({ from: 1, to: 6 }).focus().run()

A number passed to setTextSelection(position) places a caret; { from, to } selects a range. Use setNodeSelection(position) for a selectable image or other complete node, with the position immediately before that node. selectAll() selects the document. A node selection is generally nonempty but does not represent an ordinary text range.

Do not reuse numeric positions from another document or an earlier transaction without validation. Commands in a chain share a transaction. When a complex command changes structure before using later positions, map those positions through tr.mapping. Asynchronous work must also validate its document, target and task lifetime.

Preserve the toolbar target

A bold button can call editor.chain().focus().toggleBold().run(). Without a position, focus() restores the current selection rather than moving to the end. Avoid hardcoding focus('end') on every toolbar click.

Use editor.isActive('bold') for active formatting and editor.getAttributes('heading').level for heading attributes. Both are read-only queries. Word's effective formatting can also inherit from styles and needs the corresponding Word reader; see toolbar integration.

Subscribe to changes

Use selectionUpdate for selection statistics. Toolbars also depend on content changes and stored formatting at the caret, so they can observe transaction and read a bounded set of values. Moving the caret should not serialize or save the whole document. See lifecycle and events for subscription cleanup.