event.clipboardData.setData in copy event
Clipboard APIs were indeed in active development as of 2016, but things have stabilized since then:
Using event.clipboardData.setData() is supported
Changing the clipboard with event.clipboardData.setData() inside a 'copy' event handler is allowed by the spec (as long as the event is not synthetic).
Note that you need to prevent the default action in the event handler to prevent your changes from being overwritten by the browser:
document.addEventListener('copy', function(e){ e.clipboardData.setData('text/plain', 'foo'); e.preventDefault(); // default behaviour is to copy any selected text});To trigger the copy event use execCommand
If you need to trigger the copy event (and not just handle the copy requests made by the user via the browser UI), you must use document.execCommand('copy'). It will only work in certain handlers, such as the click handler:
document.getElementById("copyBtn").onclick = function() { document.execCommand('copy');}Modern browsers support both methods
- Firefox supports both
clipboardDatain thecopy/cut/pasteevents (since Firefox 22) andexecCommand('copy')from user actions (since Firefox 41) - Chrome also supports both (the latter was added in Chrome 43 - or perhaps 42?)
- caniuse.com claims that Safari 12 has complete support, versions up to 9.1 didn't support
execCommand('copy'). - MS Edge Platform Status lists IE/Edge as supporting the Clipboard APIs as of 2019, unlike when this answer was first written (2016).
https://github.com/garykac/clipboard/blob/master/clipboard.md has a compatibility table for execCommand(cut / copy / paste).
You can test this using the snippet below, please comment with the results.
More resources
- Specification: Clipboard API and events
- The Definitive Guide to Copying and Pasting in JavaScript (2014) - more information on clipboard API interoperability in browsers, including support for the "copy"/"paste" events without a selection and support for multiple formats.
- Pages tagged "Clipboard API" on MDN
Testcase
Async Clipboard API will provide a simpler way to manage the clipboard
When implemented, navigator.clipboard will let you write code like this:
navigator.clipboard.writeText('Text to be copied') .then(() => { console.log('Text copied to clipboard'); }) .catch(err => { // This can happen if the user denies clipboard permissions: console.error('Could not copy text: ', err); });Chrome 66 starts shipping a partial implementation, and they've published an article about the new API.
You can also just turn it into a function that calls its own handler and removes it
function copyStringToClipboard (string) { function handler (event){ event.clipboardData.setData('text/plain', string); event.preventDefault(); document.removeEventListener('copy', handler, true); } document.addEventListener('copy', handler, true); document.execCommand('copy');}
Bind the element id with copy event and then get the selected text. You could replace or modify the text. Get the clipboard and set the new text. To get the exact formatting you need to set the type as "text/hmtl". You may also bind it to the document instead of element.
$(ElementId).bind('copy', function(event) { var selectedText = window.getSelection().toString(); selectedText = selectedText.replace(/\u200B/g, ""); clipboardData = event.clipboardData || window.clipboardData || event.originalEvent.clipboardData; clipboardData.setData('text/html', selectedText); event.preventDefault(); });