How to Efficiently Utilize Objects in Conjunction with HTML Elements - javascript

I am getting pretty deep into an employee talent management system website and I am finding out really quick why OOP is so talked about. Being able to efficiently utilize it would change that game for me and make my codebase much more maintainable. I am currently working on a dropdown menu section, and while I have implemented OOP, I can tell from a mile away it is not "good code." It gets the job done but is very messy. I will have an example of the Object and Implementation down below. I have tried watching a few videos on implementing OOP in an existing project, but I keep coming up dry. I understand the basic concepts, but I am not sure how to implement these ideas in a real world application.
Here are some sticking points I am having:
I am not confident I instantiated my objects correctly/efficiently. I have a list of toggleable menus, each representing a candidate in the portal. Well, I created an object for each menu using a for loop. This worked, but it felt unintuitive. When I wanted to attach click events to these menus, I had to loop through them a second time to attached to objects methods as click events.
I felt I had a lot of 'if' statements in my Object. This is because I see myself using the object again in the future, but I do not think each menu will have all the same features. For example, this specific menu had a fade in animation when clicked. But, I doubt every toggleable menu will have this feature. I don't know, I just felt it made the code way more difficult to navigate.
I did not like having to loop through my menu elements and attach methods as click events. This made me have to run an additional for loop and felt 'off'. I was tempted to handle all the event attachments inside the object itself, but I wasn't sure if this is bad practice. It seemed like a good idea and would save a lot of code, but I'm not sure.
Long story short, I can see myself using OOP for forms, buttons, toggleable menus, navbars, (ect.) all over the place. The problem is I am not sure how to actually carry out the process of handling HTML elements and converting them to Objects in a clear and concise manner.
I looked into some design patterns on refactoring.guru, but I felt these concepts were past the scope of what I am trying to do. They all felt like more advanced concepts to take on after getting a solid grip on objects. It was helpful and I really liked the builder pattern. I am currently working on a branch which implements the builder pattern into my current scenario.
Any thoughts, advice, or direction?
Here is an example of the Object and it's Implementation:
TOGGLE MENU OBJECT
class ToggleMenu {
constructor(wrapper, menu, openIcon, closeIcon, title, hiddenMenu) {
this.wrapper = wrapper
this.menu = menu
this.openIcon = openIcon
this.closeIcon = closeIcon
this.title = title
this.hiddenMenu = hiddenMenu
this.toggled = false
}
props() {
console.log(this.menu)
console.log(this.openIcon)
console.log(this.closeIcon)
console.log(this.title)
console.log(this.hiddenMenu)
console.log(this.toggled)
}
openHiddenMenu(config) {
if (config == undefined){
config = {}
}
if (config.menuBackGroundColor !== undefined){
this.menu.style.backgroundColor = config.menuBackGroundColor
}
if (config.titleColor !== undefined){
this.title.style.color = config.titleColor
}
if (config.hiddenMenuDisplay !== undefined){
this.hiddenMenu.style.display = config.hiddenMenuDisplay
}
if (config.hiddenMenuAnimation !== undefined){
this.hiddenMenu.style.animationName = config.hiddenMenuAnimation
}
if(config.menuAnimation !== undefined){
this.menu.style.animationName = config.menuAnimation
}
this.openIcon.style.display = 'none'
this.closeIcon.style.display = 'block'
this.toggled = true
}
closeHiddenMenu(config){
if (config == undefined){
config = {}
}
if (config.menuAnimation !== undefined && this.toggled == true){
this.menu.style.animationName = config.menuAnimation
}
this.menu.style.backgroundColor = ''
this.openIcon.style.display = ''
this.closeIcon.style.display = ''
this.title.style.color = ''
this.hiddenMenu.style.display = ''
this.toggled = false
}
}
IMPLEMENTATION
const initCandidateMenus = () => {
let candidateToggleMenus = document.getElementsByClassName('candidate-toggle-menu')
let candidateToggleWrappers = document.getElementsByClassName('candidate-toggle-menu-wrapper')
let hiddenMenus = document.getElementsByClassName('hidden-candidate-menu')
let toggleMenus = []
//collecting toggle menu objects
for (x = 0; x < candidateToggleMenus.length; x++){
let toggleMenu = new ToggleMenu(
candidateToggleWrappers[x],
candidateToggleMenus[x],
candidateToggleMenus[x].getElementsByClassName('candidate-open-icon')[0],
candidateToggleMenus[x].getElementsByClassName('candidate-close-icon')[0],
candidateToggleMenus[x].getElementsByClassName('candidate-name')[0],
hiddenMenus[x],
)
toggleMenus.push(toggleMenu)
}
//looping through toggle menu objects
for (x = 0; x < toggleMenus.length; x++){
let currentMenu = toggleMenus[x]
currentMenu.openIcon.addEventListener('click', () => {
//closing all other toggle menus
for (y = 0; y < toggleMenus.length; y++){
toggleMenus[y].closeHiddenMenu()
}
//opening current menu
currentMenu.openHiddenMenu({
menuBackGroundColor: 'var(--main-clr)',
titleColor: 'var(--white)',
menuAnimation: 'fade-title-color',
hiddenMenuDisplay: 'flex',
hiddenMenuAnimation: 'open-hidden-menu'
})
})
currentMenu.closeIcon.addEventListener('click', () => {
//closing current menu
currentMenu.closeHiddenMenu()
})
}
}

ok this isn’t really an answer, but more of just advice that I need to use code for.
I noticed that you didn’t implement a lot of common features that can reduce lines and characters, so I’ll point them out here
For the class functions, you did this:
openHiddenMenu(config) {
if (config == undefined){
config = {}
}
Which can be simplified to this:
openHiddenMenu(config = {}) {
// Completely remove the entire if statement
Putting an equal sign in the parameter will assign a default value if it isn’t defined.
Another thing is checking if something is undefined:
if (config.menuBackGroundColor !== undefined){
this.menu.style.backgroundColor = config.menuBackGroundColor
}
if (config.titleColor !== undefined){
this.title.style.color = config.titleColor
}
if (config.hiddenMenuDisplay !== undefined){
this.hiddenMenu.style.display = config.hiddenMenuDisplay
}
if (config.hiddenMenuAnimation !== undefined){
this.hiddenMenu.style.animationName = config.hiddenMenuAnimation
}
if(config.menuAnimation !== undefined){
this.menu.style.animationName = config.menuAnimation
}
Instead you could remove the ‘!== undefined’ part, because any value that is ‘falsey’ (0, NULL, undefined, NaN) will also return false. So if it has a value and isnt 0, it will return true.
Plus since it’s only 1 line, you can remove brackets:
if (config.menuBackGroundColor)
this.menu.style.backgroundColor = config.menuBackGroundColor
if (config.titleColor)
this.title.style.color = config.titleColor
if (config.hiddenMenuDisplay)
this.hiddenMenu.style.display = config.hiddenMenuDisplay
if (config.hiddenMenuAnimation)
this.hiddenMenu.style.animationName = config.hiddenMenuAnimation
if(config.menuAnimation)
this.menu.style.animationName = config.menuAnimation
If you wanted to simplify even further, you could use an or operator ||, so if the value is falsey, it will become the other value. This doubles as a default value.
this.menu.style.backgroundColor = config.menuBackGroundColor || // Default value
this.title.style.color = config.titleColor || // Default value
this.hiddenMenu.style.display = config.hiddenMenuDisplay || // Default value
this.hiddenMenu.style.animationName = config.hiddenMenuAnimation || // Default value
this.menu.style.animationName = config.menuAnimation || // Default value
There are some other things you can do, but this answer is insanely long and I’m writing this late at night. Hope this helps though

Related

Javascript function parameters in Acrobat

Hopefully you all don't get pissed at me for such a seemingly simple question..
Basically, I have a PDF form that I'm scripting with javascript.
I have a bunch of check boxes that I would like to set required and/or not required based on other inputs and I'm trying to repeat code as little as possible, especially since there's a ton of inputs.
Right now, the best way I can accomplish what I'm attempting is by setting a function for each instance of inputs as follows:
function setWalkwayNotRequired() {
this.getField("sidewalkAsphalt").required = false;
this.getField("sidewalkConcrete").required = false;
this.getField("sidewalkPavers").required = false;
this.getField("sidewalkCondition").required = false;
}
I would then call this function based on the input of a certain checkbox:
if (this.getField("sidewalkNone").value == "Yes") {
setSidewalkNotRequired();
}
Then all of the above-mentioned fields would be set to not required.
I feel like there should be a way to create a single "setRequired" or "setNotRequired" function to take a parameter of the field in question.
In my mind that would look something like this:
function setRequired(a, b, c, d) {
this.getField(a).required = true;
this.getField(b).required = true;
this.getField(c).required = true;
this.getField(d).required = true;
}
I would then call on that function for all instances, for example, walkways (like that above) or driveways, etc. like so:
if (this.getField("sidewalkNone").value == "Off") {
setRequired('"sidewalkAsphalt"', '"sidewalkConcrete"', '"sidewalkPavers"', '"sidewalkCondition"');
}
Again, in my mind what would then be output based on the above code once the function is called is something like:
if (this.getField("sidewalkNone").value == "Off") {
this.getField("sidewalkAsphalt").required = true;
this.getField("sidewalkConcrete").required = true;
this.getField("sidewalkPavers").required = true;
this.getField("sidewalkCondition").required = true;
}
Doing it the way I did in the first code block would require me to create separate functions for each set of checkboxes, creating a lot of code in an already huge file. The second way would allow me to use 1 function over and over throwing the field names as parameters depending on where I'm at in the PDF.
I'm also not very clear on if it's even legal to declare the parameters as I did with the '"..."' quotes; I did that because I need the double quotes inside the this.getField().
Again, I'm sorry if this is novice, I've just been trying to play with the code for a while now and can't get it to work.
Any input would be amazing.
You could just pass in an Array of field names:
function setRequired( fieldNames, isRequired = true ) {
for( var i = 0; i < fieldNames.length; i++ ) {
var fieldName = fieldNames[i];
this.getField( fieldName ).required = isRequired;
}
}
Usage:
if( this.getField("sidewalkNone").value == "Off" ) {
setRequired( [ "sidewalkAsphalt", "sidewalkConcrete", "sidewalkPavers", "sidewalkCondition" ] );
}
If you use hierarchical naming with dot notation, you can set properties on the parent to affect all children. For example, if you name the fields "sidewalk.Asphalt", "sidewalk.Concrete", and "sidewalk.Pavers"...
this.getField("sidewalk").required = true;
... will set all the children to be required.

Javascript observer or proxy without all changes going through proxy

I'm writing a subclass of arrays in Javascript to have better support for matrix operations (I know others exist, this is partially for me to re-teach myself linear algebra), and what I want is to have some properties that are reset whenever any values in the matrix are adjusted. Some calculations like the determinant are computationally intensive, and I'd like to be able to store them to avoid re-calculation, but then they need to be reset to null whenever any matrix elements are changed.
Essentially, it seems like what i want is the deprecated Array.observe(). And the replacement, proxies, seem like a lot of overhead for this one thing. As alluded to in some of the comments on Detecting Changes in a Javascript Array using the proxy object that were not directly addressed, I don't want to have to access my matrices only ever through proxies. I use a lot of handy [i][j] indexing and [mat[i], mat[j]] = [mat[j], mat[i]] in the code I've written so far.
class Matrix extends Array {
constructor() {
var args = [];
for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++) {
if (Array.isArray(arguments[i])) {
args.push(new Matrix(...arguments[i]));
} else {
args.push(arguments[i]);
}
}
super(...args);
this._determinant = null;
}
determ(forceRecalculate = false) {
if (this._determinant === null || forceRecalculate) {
this.upperEchelon();
}
return this._determinant;
}
upperEchelon(reduced = false) {
//There's a lot of code here but in the process of doing this other thing
//you get 99% of the way to calculating the determinant so it does this
this._determinant = factor;
}
}
Basically, I want anything like mat[0][0] = 10 or mat.push([2,4,5]) that updates the values in the matrix to set mat._determinant = null. Or any equivalent method of flagging that it needs to be re-calculated next time it's asked for. I'm not opposed to using proxies necessarily if someone can help me figure out the implementation, I would just rather have this set-to-null-on-update property be inherent to my class functionality.
What I really want is a way to overload base methods like [] a la C# so the functions that do the updating would trigger this without changing syntax, but I've resigned myself to not having that in JS.
While a Proxy would work, it would also be pretty slow. A different approach would be for every method that needs to use the value of _determinant go through a different function first to check to see if the _determinant needs to be updated (and if so, updates it). This way, the expensive recalculation is not done every time the array changes, but only just in time for the result to be used. For example:
class Matrix extends Array {
constructor() {
var args = [];
for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++) {
if (Array.isArray(arguments[i])) {
args.push(new Matrix(...arguments[i]));
} else {
args.push(arguments[i]);
}
}
super(...args);
this._determinant = null;
}
// next method is effectively a recursive deep join
// could also use toString if it doesn't interfere with anything else
getString() {
const itemsStr = this.map((item) => (
item instanceof Matrix
? item.getString()
: item
))
.join(',');
const result = '[' + itemsStr + ']';
return result;
}
getDeterm() {
const newString = this.getString();
if (newString !== this._lastString) {
this._lastString = newString;
this.upperEchelon();
}
return this._determinant;
}
upperEchelon() {
console.log('running upperEchelon');
this._determinant = Math.random();
}
}
const m = new Matrix([2, 3, 4], 5);
console.log(m.getDeterm());
// Not calculated again:
console.log(m.getDeterm());
// Mutation, next call of getDeterm will run upperEchelon:
m[0][0] = 1;
console.log(m.getDeterm());

Generalizing two functions which act inversely on two properties

I have these two functions, and I feel there must be an elegant functional way to generalize them.
$scope.togglePick = function(){
let targetPhoto = $scope.photoImport.data[indexService.current];
targetPhoto.pick = !targetPhoto.pick;
if(targetPhoto.reject && targetPhoto.pick) {
targetPhoto.reject = false;
}
}
$scope.toggleReject = function() {
let targetPhoto = $scope.photoImport.data[indexService.current];
targetPhoto.reject = !targetPhoto.reject;
if (targetPhoto.reject && targetPhoto.pick) {
targetPhoto.pick = false;
}
}
I suppose I could pass in string params togglePick = toggle('pick', 'reject') and use [] notation in the toggle function, but this feels like magic strings... even though they're property names, I'm uncertain. I could also have:
function toggle(magicFlag){
let primary = magicFlag ? 'pick' : 'reject';
let secondary = magicFlag ? 'reject' : 'pick';
...
targetPhoto[primary] = !targetPhoto[primary];
...
}
Again, ick, magic flag. Is there a more elegant way to do this than longhand in each function?
The amount of code in these functions and the slight differences makes them fine the way they are. Without working the property string weirdness, I don't see how you really make this generic while remaining readable. Sometimes it's okay not to have the most generic code you possibly can. That line in the sand has to be drawn somewhere.

Google places autocomplete, how to clean up pac-container?

I'm using the google places autocomplete control, and it creates an element for the drop down with a class pac-container.
I'm using the autocomplete in an ember app, and when I'm done with it the DOM element the autocomplete is bound to gets removed, but the pac-container element remains, even thought its hidden. Next time I instantiate a new autocomplete, a new pac-container is created and the old one remains. I can't seem to find anything like a dispose method on the API, so is there a way of doing this correctly? If not I guess I should just use jquery to clear up the elements.
I was having the same problem, and hopefully Google eventually provides an official means of cleanup, but for now I was able to solve the problem by manually removing the pac-container object, a reference to which can be found in the Autocomplete class returned from:
var autocomplete = new google.maps.places.Autocomplete(element, options);
The reference to the pac-container element can be found at:
autocomplete.gm_accessors_.place.Mc.gm_accessors_.input.Mc.L
Which I simply removed from the DOM in my widget destructor:
$(autocomplete.gm_accessors_.place.Mc.gm_accessors_.input.Mc.L).remove();
Hope this helps.
Update
I'm not sure how Google's obfuscation works, but parts of the above seem obfuscated, and obviously will fail if the obfuscation or internal structures of the API change. Can't do much about the latter, but for the former you could at least search the object properties by expected criteria. As we can see, some of the property names are not obfuscated, while some appear to be, such as "Mc" and "L". To make this a little more robust, I wrote the following code:
var obj = autocomplete.gm_accessors_.place;
$.each(Object.keys(obj), function(i, key) {
if(typeof(obj[key]) == "object" && obj[key].hasOwnProperty("gm_accessors_")) {
obj = obj[key].gm_accessors_.input[key];
return false;
}
});
$.each(Object.keys(obj), function(i, key) {
if($(obj[key]).hasClass("pac-container")) {
obj = obj[key];
return false;
}
});
$(obj).remove();
The code expects the general structure to remain the same, while not relying on the (possibly) obfuscated names "Mc" and "L". Ugly I know, but hopefully Google fixes this issue soon.
My implementation of code from above without jquery.
var autocomplete = new google.maps.places.Autocomplete(element, options);
export function getAutocompletePacContainer(autocomplete) {
const place: Object = autocomplete.gm_accessors_.place;
const placeKey = Object.keys(place).find((value) => (
(typeof(place[value]) === 'object') && (place[value].hasOwnProperty('gm_accessors_'))
));
const input = place[placeKey].gm_accessors_.input[placeKey];
const inputKey = Object.keys(input).find((value) => (
(input[value].classList && input[value].classList.contains('pac-container'))
));
return input[inputKey];
}
getAutocompletePacContainer(autocomplete).remove()
This works for now until Google changes the class name.
autocomplete.addListener('place_changed', function() {
$('.pac-container').remove();
});
Built this recursive function to locate element position inside autocomplete object.
Get first matching object
var elementLocator = function(prop, className, maxSearchLevel, level) {
level++;
if (level === (maxSearchLevel + 1) || !prop || !(Array.isArray(prop) || prop === Object(prop))) {
return;
}
if (prop === Object(prop) && prop.classList && prop.classList.contains && typeof prop.classList.contains === 'function' && prop.classList.contains(className)) {
return prop;
}
for (const key in prop) {
if (prop.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
var element = elementLocator(prop[key], className, maxSearchLevel, level);
if (element) {
return element;
}
}
}
};
Usage:
var elm = null;
try {
//set to search first 12 levels, pass -1 to search all levels
elm = elementLocator(this.autocomplete, 'pac-container', 12, null);
} catch(e) {
console.log(e);
}
I just encountered this issue as well. It may have something to do with my input field being inside of a flexbox but I haven't tried restructuring my page yet. Instead I added an onfocus listener to my input field as well as an onscroll listener to it's container. Inside I get the input field's position with getBoundingClientRect and then update my stylesheet with the values. I tried directly selecting and updating the .pac-container via document.querySelctor but that didn't seem to work. You may need a setTimeout to allow it to be added to the DOM first.
Here is my code:
let ruleIndex = null;
const form = document.body.querySelector('.form');
const input = document.body.querySelector('.form-input');
const positionAutoComplete = () => {
const { top, left, height } = inputField.getBoundingClientRect();
if(ruleIndex) document.styleSheets[0].deleteRule(ruleIndex);
ruleIndex = document.styleSheets[0].insertRule(`.pac-container { top: ${top + height}px !important; left: ${left}px !important; }`);
}
form.addEventListener('scroll', positionAutoComplete);
input.addEventListener('focus', positionAutoComplete);
As mentioned in an earlier answer, this breaks the minute google decides to rename .pac-container so not a perfect fix but works in the meantime.

css to json parser freezes the browser-window

I found some days ago a really nice approach to parse css-strings (even nested) to json. However, it seems, that there's somewhere a big problem in it.
https://github.com/csvplot/cml-parse
If we try to parse a css-string, it will kill the browser window, don't know what's going on here... I already opend an issue but there's no one to answer the issue, since the maintainer David Ellis is lost.
Any ideas/suggestions?
function parse(data) {
var stateStack = [];
var scopeStack = [];
var outObj = {};
while(data) {
// Grab current number of indentation characters
/^(\s*)/.test(data);
// If we've entered any state, and that state is not an explicit block declaration ( {}'s ) and we have an indent level smaller than the most recent indent level,
// then remove the most recent scope level and recall the state back to the previous scope's state
if(stateStack.length &&
stateStack[stateStack.length-1] !== 'explicitBlock' &&
scopeStack.length &&
RegExp.$1.length < scopeStack[scopeStack.length-1].indent) {
scopeStack.pop();
while(stateStack.length && (stateStack[stateStack.length-1] !== 'block' || stateStack[stateStack.length-1] !== 'explicitBlock')) {
stateStack.pop();
}
}
// If current chunk is the key to an object
if(/^(\s*)([^:]*)\s*([{\n])/.test(data)) {
// Grab the indent size of the key and the current outObj position from the scope stack
var indentLength = RegExp.$1.length;
var currScope = (scopeStack.length ? scopeStack[scopeStack.length-1].ref : outObj);
// Split the identifier by spaces and construct/traverse down the defined path
// TODO: Figure out how to handle commas that define the same inner content along multiple paths
RegExp.$2.split(/\s*/).forEach(function(scope) {
if(scope !== '') {
currScope[scope] = currScope[scope] || {};
currScope = currScope[scope];
}
});
// Push the deepest scope and the current indent length onto the scope stack, and push the explicitBlock vs block state onto the state stack
// TODO: Work on a state diagram to truly handle all of the possible states involved properly
scopeStack.push({ref: currScope, indent: indentLength});
stateStack.push(RegExp.$3 === '{' ? 'explicitBlock' : 'block');
// Rip out the handled chunk of data from the string
data = data.replace(/^\s*[^:]*\s*[{\n]/, '');
}
}
return data;
}
http://fiddle.jshell.net/5pTBr/
Running the code, it looks like it just does not work.
It reaches an infinite loop since this regex is failing after the first run:
if(/^(\s*)([^:]*)\s*([{\n])/.test(data)) {
Hence why the browser is stuck. It also does not return the correct JSON.
I'd advise on writing something like this by yourself, or trying to debug and fix the existing code.

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