Limiting number of lines in textarea

This might help (probably be best using jQuery, onDomReady and unobtrusively adding the keydown event to the textarea) but tested in IE7 and FF3:

<html>
  <head><title>Test</title></head>
  <body>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      var keynum, lines = 1;

      function limitLines(obj, e) {
        // IE
        if(window.event) {
          keynum = e.keyCode;
        // Netscape/Firefox/Opera
        } else if(e.which) {
          keynum = e.which;
        }

        if(keynum == 13) {
          if(lines == obj.rows) {
            return false;
          }else{
            lines++;
          }
        }
      }
      </script>
    <textarea rows="4" onkeydown="return limitLines(this, event)"></textarea>
  </body>
</html>

*Edit – explanation: It catches the keypress if the ENTER key is pressed and just doesn’t add a new line if the lines in the textarea are the same number as the rows of the textarea. Else it increments the number of lines.

Edit #2: Considering people are still coming to this answer I thought I’d update it to handle paste, delete and cut, as best as I can.

<html>

<head>
    <title>Test</title>
    <style>
        .limit-me {
            height: 500px;
            width: 500px;
        }
    </style>
</head>

<body>
<textarea rows="4" class="limit-me"></textarea>

<script>
    var lines = 1;

    function getKeyNum(e) {
        var keynum;
        // IE
        if (window.event) {
            keynum = e.keyCode;
            // Netscape/Firefox/Opera
        } else if (e.which) {
            keynum = e.which;
        }

        return keynum;
    }

    var limitLines = function (e) {
        var keynum = getKeyNum(e);

        if (keynum === 13) {
            if (lines >= this.rows) {
                e.stopPropagation();
                e.preventDefault();
            } else {
                lines++;
            }
        }
    };

    var setNumberOfLines = function (e) {
        lines = getNumberOfLines(this.value);
    };

    var limitPaste = function (e) {
        var clipboardData, pastedData;

        // Stop data actually being pasted into div
        e.stopPropagation();
        e.preventDefault();

        // Get pasted data via clipboard API
        clipboardData = e.clipboardData || window.clipboardData;
        pastedData = clipboardData.getData('Text');

        var pastedLines = getNumberOfLines(pastedData);

        // Do whatever with pasteddata
        if (pastedLines <= this.rows) {
            lines = pastedLines;
            this.value = pastedData;
        }
        else if (pastedLines > this.rows) {
            // alert("Too many lines pasted ");
            this.value = pastedData
                .split(/\r\n|\r|\n/)
                .slice(0, this.rows)
                .join("\n ");
        }
    };

    function getNumberOfLines(str) {
        if (str) {
            return str.split(/\r\n|\r|\n/).length;
        }

        return 1;
    }

    var limitedElements = document.getElementsByClassName('limit-me');

    Array.from(limitedElements).forEach(function (element) {
        element.addEventListener('keydown', limitLines);
        element.addEventListener('keyup', setNumberOfLines);
        element.addEventListener('cut', setNumberOfLines);
        element.addEventListener('paste', limitPaste);
    });
</script>
</body>
</html>

More Related Contents:

Leave a Comment Cancel reply