How can I detect highlighted text from a textarea?

Issue

I want to detect if text is highlighted in a textarea only, not the whole document. window.getSelection() works, but I don't want to grab text from any other part of the document that could be highlighted, just what's in the text area.

Basically, I'm trying to do this:

if (document.getElementById("mytextarea").getSelection) {
    //do stuff
}

What would be the easiest way to accomplish this? Thanks!

Solution

this should work (assuming by highlighted you mean selected)

var textarea = document.getElementById("tarea");  
var selection = (textarea.value).substring(textarea.selectionStart,textarea.selectionEnd);

console.log(selection); 

<textarea id="tarea"></textarea>

Answered By - user6057915