Control-A in a code area selects more than just the code.

Question

When I click in a code area and then press control-a, I expect to see only the code in the code panel selected. Instead, everything on the page is selected. If I wanted to select everything on the page, then I would not have clicked in the code area.

Update: this is not an issue with short pieces of code, but for longer pieces, it sure is hard to copy just the code.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

using System.Collections.Specialized;

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.EnterpriseServices;

using ESRI.ArcGIS.esriSystem;
using ESRI.ArcGIS.Server;
using ESRI.ArcGIS.Geometry;
using ESRI.ArcGIS.Geodatabase;
using ESRI.ArcGIS.Carto;
using ESRI.ArcGIS.SOESupport;


//TODO: sign the project (project properties > signing tab > sign the assembly)
//      this is strongly suggested if the dll will be registered using regasm.exe <your>.dll /codebase


namespace RestSOE1
{
    [ComVisible(true)]
    [Guid("2d1eaa1c-c07c-47f1-b97e-b0730bbbf619")]
    [ClassInterface(ClassInterfaceType.None)]
    public class RestSOE1 : ServicedComponent, IServerObjectExtension, IObjectConstruct, IRESTRequestHandler
    {
        private string soe_name;

        private IPropertySet configProps;
        private IServerObjectHelper serverObjectHelper;
        private ServerLogger logger;
        private IRESTRequestHandler reqHandler;

        public RestSOE1()
        {
            soe_name = this.GetType().Name;
            logger = new ServerLogger();
            reqHandler = new SoeRestImpl(soe_name, CreateRestSchema()) as IRESTRequestHandler;
        }

        #region IServerObjectExtension Members

        public void Init(IServerObjectHelper pSOH)
        {
            serverObjectHelper = pSOH;
        }

        public void Shutdown()
        {
        }

        #endregion

        #region IObjectConstruct Members

        public void Construct(IPropertySet props)
        {
            configProps = props;
        }

        #endregion

        #region IRESTRequestHandler Members

        public string GetSchema()
        {
            return reqHandler.GetSchema();
        }

        public byte[] HandleRESTRequest(string Capabilities, string resourceName, string operationName, string operationInput, string outputFormat, string requestProperties, out string responseProperties)
        {
            return reqHandler.HandleRESTRequest(Capabilities, resourceName, operationName, operationInput, outputFormat, requestProperties, out responseProperties);
        }

        #endregion

        private RestResource CreateRestSchema()
        {
            RestResource rootRes = new RestResource(soe_name, false, RootResHandler);

            RestOperation sampleOper = new RestOperation("sampleOperation",
                                                      new string[] { "parm1", "parm2" },
                                                      new string[] { "json" },
                                                      SampleOperHandler);

            rootRes.operations.Add(sampleOper);

            return rootRes;
        }

        private byte[] RootResHandler(NameValueCollection boundVariables, string outputFormat, string requestProperties, out string responseProperties)
        {
            responseProperties = null;

            JsonObject result = new JsonObject();
            result.AddString("hello", "world");

            return Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(result.ToJson());
        }

        private byte[] SampleOperHandler(NameValueCollection boundVariables,
                                                  JsonObject operationInput,
                                                      string outputFormat,
                                                      string requestProperties,
                                                  out string responseProperties)
        {
            responseProperties = null;

            string parm1Value;
            bool found = operationInput.TryGetString("parm1", out parm1Value);
            if (!found || string.IsNullOrEmpty(parm1Value))
                throw new ArgumentNullException("parm1");

            string parm2Value;
            found = operationInput.TryGetString("parm2", out parm2Value);
            if (!found || string.IsNullOrEmpty(parm2Value))
                throw new ArgumentNullException("parm2");

            JsonObject result = new JsonObject();
            result.AddString("parm1", parm1Value);
            result.AddString("parm2", parm2Value);

            return Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(result.ToJson());
        }


    }
}

Answer 1

When I click in a code area and then press control-a, I expect to see only the code in the code panel selected. Instead, everything on the page is selected. If I wanted to select everything on the page, then I would not have clicked in the code area.

That isn't how HTML selection works, though -- this might be an unreasonable expectation.

Also bear in mind we discourage posting giant blocks of code -- just post the relevant parts, the stuff necessary for the question or answer, and link to the complete code in pastebin or somewhere else off-site.

Answer 2

At https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/821/easy-way-to-copy-code-block/891#891, Martin Scharrer has written a Greasemonkey script that inserts a select all button under every chunk of code. When you click on it, the code chunk is selected, and you can copy it by pressing Ctrl + c. In its current form, the script only works on tex.stackexchange.com, but by inserting the line // @include http://*.stackexchange.com/* near the beginning, it can be made to work on all stackexchange sites.

Answer 3

For Firefox users, a simple solution for code within scrollable windows, such as your example, is to click in front of the first character of the code window and hold down Shift + Page Down until it reaches the bottom of the window. Voila, all the code is selected and you can then copy-paste as usual.

Note: You may have to use Shift + Down Arrow to get the last line. At least that was my experience with Firefox.

Note 2: This does not seem to work with Chrome or IE (tested on Windows 7).