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I have a for-each loop which prints out some text from a database and also displays a button. So essentially I have multiple "areas" of text and each with their own button. I want it so that whenever a user clicks on a button, that specific text it is matched up with is copied to the clipboard.

I tried doing multiple searches on this before posting on here. However, from the other solutions, I read they more or less show a solution for copying text in an input tag. However, in my case the user is not typing anything in that needs to get copied - the text is already on the screen and can't be changed.

I am having trouble with copying that specific text that matches a button since the text does not have a specific id or class name because it is just printing text as it goes through the loop, so they all have the same class name. So how would I specify a specific text with that button, since the buttons could get pressed in any order?

HTML:

<c:forEach items="$items" var="item">
<h2>$item.itemDescription</h2>
<input class="big-button" type="button" value="Add item copied to clipboard" id="btn" onclick="status(this)">
</c:forEach>

JavaScript:

function status(clickedBtn) 
 
 clickedBtn.value = "Copied to clipboard";
 clickedBtn.disabled = true;
 clickedBtn.style.color = 'white';
 clickedBtn.style.background = 'gray';
 

I would change your HTML to generate some kind of ID that can be used to reference the element with your text.

<c:forEach items="$items" var="item" varStatus="loop">
 <h2 id="item-desc-$loop.index">$item.itemDescription</h2>
 <input class="big-button" data-desc-ref="item-desc-$loop.index" type="button" value="Add item copied to clipboard" id="btn" onclick="status(this)">
</c:forEach>

Above I added code to generate a unique id (e.g. id="item-desc-0") on each <h2> element. On the button, I added a data- attribute to reference the ID of the <h2> so we can retrieve it later.

Now we change your status function to find the element by the ID specified in the data attribute, and get its innerText (the content between the opening and closing tags).

Then, you can pass that text to the function that copies it to the clipboard, reference above in my comment.

 function status(clickedBtn) 
 
 var text = document.getElementById(clickedBtn.dataset.descRef).innerText;
 copyToClipboard(text);

 clickedBtn.value = "Copied to clipboard";
 clickedBtn.disabled = true;
 clickedBtn.style.color = 'white';
 clickedBtn.style.background = 'gray';
 

Here's a working example. I had to put in sample HTML that would be generated by your loop.

function copyToClipboard(text) 
 if (window.clipboardData && window.clipboardData.setData) 
 // IE specific code path to prevent textarea being shown while dialog is visible.
 return clipboardData.setData("Text", text);

 else if (document.queryCommandSupported && document.queryCommandSupported("copy")) 
 var textarea = document.createElement("textarea");
 textarea.textContent = text;
 textarea.style.position = "fixed"; // Prevent scrolling to bottom of page in MS Edge.
 document.body.appendChild(textarea);
 textarea.select();
 try 
 return document.execCommand("copy"); // Security exception may be thrown by some browsers.
 catch (ex) 
 console.warn("Copy to clipboard failed.", ex);
 return false;
 finally 
 document.body.removeChild(textarea);
 
 


function status(clickedBtn) 
 var text = document.getElementById(clickedBtn.dataset.descRef).innerText;

 copyToClipboard(text);

 clickedBtn.value = "Copied to clipboard";
 clickedBtn.disabled = true;
 clickedBtn.style.color = 'white';
 clickedBtn.style.background = 'gray';

<h2 id="item-desc-0">Testing 0</h2>
<input class="big-button" data-desc-ref="item-desc-0" type="button" value="Add item copied to clipboard" id="btn" onclick="status(this)">

<h2 id="item-desc-1">Testing 1</h2>
<input class="big-button" data-desc-ref="item-desc-1" type="button" value="Add item copied to clipboard" id="btn" onclick="status(this)">

<h2 id="item-desc-2">Testing 2</h2>
<input class="big-button" data-desc-ref="item-desc-2" type="button" value="Add item copied to clipboard" id="btn" onclick="status(this)">

Cory provides a very helpful link to the clipboard aspect, I thought I'd provide the info about how to target a clicked element.

To achieve this, pass event to your onclick attribute, and use event.target to reference the clicked element. Here's a basic example:

function copy(e) 
	alert(e.target.value)

<button onclick="copy(event)" value="copy this">copy this</button>
<button onclick="copy(event)" value="copy that">copy that</button>

To address your specific requirement, if you put item.itemDescription into the value attribute, then it will copy the text you want.

If h2 element exactly is on previous of button you can use like this.

function status(clickedBtn) 
 
 clickedBtn.value = "Copied to clipboard";
 clickedBtn.disabled = true;
 clickedBtn.style.color = 'white';
 clickedBtn.style.background = 'gray';

 //New Code
 copyToCliboard(clickedBtn.previousSibling);
 
 function copyToCliboard(el) 
 if (document.body.createTextRange) 
 var range = document.body.createTextRange();
 range.moveToElementText(el);
 range.select();
 else 
 var selection = window.getSelection();
 var range = document.createRange();
 range.selectNodeContents(el);
 selection.removeAllRanges();
 selection.addRange(range);
 
 document.execCommand("copy");
 window.getSelection().removeAllRanges();
 

h2
display:inline;

<html>
 <head>
 </head>
 <body>
 <div><h2>Text1</h2><button onclick="status(this)">Copy</button></div>
 <div><h2>Text2</h2><button onclick="status(this)">Copy</button></div>
 </body>
</html>