SVGTextContentElement: getCharNumAtPosition() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The getCharNumAtPosition() method of the SVGTextContentElement interface represents the character which caused a text glyph to be rendered at a given position in the coordinate system. Because the relationship between characters and glyphs is not one-to-one, only the first character of the relevant typographic character is returned.

If no character is found at the specified position, -1 is returned.

Syntax

getCharNumAtPosition(point)

Parameters

point

A DOMPoint object; the coordinates (x, y) where the position of the character is to be checked in the user coordinate space.

Return value

A long; the index of the character that corresponds to the position.

Examples

Finding the Character at a Specific Position

html
<svg width="200" height="100">
  <text id="exampleText" x="10" y="40" font-size="16">Hello, SVG World!</text>
</svg>

js
const textElement = document.getElementById("exampleText");

// Create a DOMPoint for the position (30, 40)
const point = new DOMPoint(30, 40);

// Get the character at the specified position
const charIndex = textElement.getCharNumAtPosition(point);

console.log(charIndex); // Output: 2 (for character "l")

// Check with a point where no character is present
const offPoint = new DOMPoint(300, 40);
const offCharIndex = textElement.getCharNumAtPosition(offPoint);

console.log(offCharIndex); // Output: -1 (no character found)