I have been writing a reusable script, let's call it a plugin although it's not jQuery, that can be initialised in a declarative way from the HTML. I have extremely simplified it to explain my question so let's say that if a user inserts a tag like:
<span data-color="green"></span>
the script will fire because the attribute data-color is found, changing the color accordingly.
This approach proved very handy because it avoids anyone using the plugin having to initialise it imperatively in their own scripts with something like:
var elem = document.getElementsByTagName('span')[0];
myPlugin.init(elem);
Moreover by going the declarative way I could get away without defining any global (in this case myPlugin), which seemed to be a nice side effect.
I simplified this situation in an example fiddle here, and as you can see a user can avoid writing any js, leaving the configuration to the HTML.
Current situation
The plugin is wrapped in a closure like so:
;(function(){
var changeColor = {
init : function(elem){
var bg = elem.getAttribute('data-color');
elem.style.background = bg;
}
};
// the plugin itslef looks for appropriate HTML elements
var elem = document.querySelectorAll('[data-color]')[0];
// it inits itself as soon as it is evaluated at page load
changeColor.init(elem);
})();
The page loads and the span gets the correct colour, so everything is fine.
The problem
What has come up lately, though, is the need to let the user re-evaluate/re-init the plugin when he needs to.
Let's say that in the first example the HTML is changed dynamically after the page is loaded, becoming:
<span data-color="purple"></span>
With the first fiddle there's no way to re-init the plugin, so I am now testing some solutions.
Possible solutions
Exposing a global
The most obvious is exposing a global. If we go this route the fiddle becomes
http://jsfiddle.net/gleezer/089om9z5/4/
where the only real difference is removing the selection of the element, leaving it to the user:
// we remove this line
// var elem = document.querySelectorAll('[data-color]')[0];
and adding something like (again, i am simplifying for the sake of the question):
window.changeColor = changeColor;
to the above code in order to expose the init method to be called from anywhere.
Although this works I am not satisfied with it. I am really looking for an alternative solution, as I don't want to lose the ease of use of the original approach and I don't want to force anyone using the script adding a new global to their projects.
Events
One solution I have found is leveraging events. By putting something like this in the plugin body:
elem.addEventListener('init', function() {
changeColor.init(elem);
}, false);
anybody will be able to just create an event an fire it accordingly. An example in this case:
var event = new CustomEvent('init', {});
span.dispatchEvent(event);
This would re-init the plugin whenever needed. A working fiddle is to be found here:
http://jsfiddle.net/gleezer/tgztjdzL/1/
The question (finally)
My question is: is there a cleaner/better way of handling this?
How can i let people using this plugin without the need of a global or having to initialise the script themselves the first time? Is event the best way or am I missing some more obvious/better solutions?
You can override Element.setAttribute to trigger your plugin:
var oldSetAttribute = Element.prototype.setAttribute;
Element.prototype.setAttribute = function(name, value) {
oldSetAttribute.call(this, name, value);
if (name === 'data-color') {
changeColor.init(this);
}
}
Pros:
User does not have to explicitly re-initialize the plugin. It will happen automatically when required.
Cons:
This will, of course, only work if the user changes data-color attributes using setAttribute, and not if they create new DOM elements using innerHTML or via some other approach.
Modifying host object prototypes is considered bad practice by many, and for good reasons. Use at your own risk.
Related
I apologize if this is a duplicate, just haven't been able to find anything close to this myself.
The company I work for has an online reporting system that is run by an ng-app applied directly to the body tag. I have been tasked with modifying the result that returns from this ng-app. Following code is called using onload attached to the body tag.
function getElements(){
var list;
list = document.getElementsByClassName("neutral");
[].forEach.call(list, function (listItem) {
addNeutral(listItem);
});
...
Basically, trying to find anything with class "neutral" and apply results from another function to it. The addNeutral function is basically just
element.classList.add("neutralHighlight");
This code seems to run and gathers the correct list of elements, but the new class is never added and no errors occur. So long story short, is there any way to modify the output of a ng-app using code separate from the ng-app itself? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Update 3/5/20
So I implemented Shaun's response and it still isn't working properly. With some debug messages, I can see that it collects the "list" variable as an HTMLCollection. The forEach function doesn't seem to even trig
function getElements(){
var list;
list = document.getElementsByClassName("neutral");
console.log(list); //Debug - Shows in console
[].forEach.call(list, function (listItem) {
console.log(listItem); //Debug - Does not show in console
addNeutral(listItem);
});
}
function addNeutral(element){
angular.element(element).addClass("neutralHighlight");
console.log("!!!end addNeutral"); //Debug - Does not show in console
}
Update 3/9/20 -SOLUTION-
Application is returning the HTML Collection, but it displays with a length of 0 (still displays the objects, but I think that's a Firefox console thing). When trying to loop through the list items, it returns null for the first item, so the function is still being called before the Angular app loads completely.
That being said, I messed around with things a bit this morning and came to a solution! I ended up using the setInterval function with a 5 second interval (since I need it to update, I may change this to optimize it later by adding onChange items to the objects I grab initially). The setTimeout that was proposed would have worked with a delay added to it. This probably isn't the most elegant solution, and there's probably a better way to do it, but this works for anyone interested.
function getElements(){
var list;
list = document.getElementsByClassName("neutral");
for (i = 0; i <= list.length; i++){
var listItem = list.item(i);
addNeutral(listItem);
}
}
function loadFunction(){
setInterval(function(){getElements()}, 5000);
}
I added <script>loadFunction()</script> right before the closing HTML tag to execute.
Update 4/21/20 -IMPROVED SOLUTION- CSS Attributes
So this is a bit specific to my scenario, but I wanted to include it for anybody else who may come across this in the future. I was actually able to accomplish this entirely with CSS attribute selectors. The tags that I wanted to edit all had specific titles assigned to them via the ng-app provided from the company, so I was able to use CSS selectors like div [title~="NotReadyForNextCall"]{<custom styling here>} to select any block that included an agent who was not ready for their next call. This is a much better solution in terms of resources required to operate and overall performance, so I hope it helps anybody looking at this down the line!
You might be able to get around this by using the angular object in your code and adding the class on an angular.element instead. AngularJS doesn't use a virtual DOM but it does use its own node references (which is what makes it so tricky to work with outside of the framework, as Lex pointed out in the comments of your question). Try:
angular.element(element).addClass("neutralHighlight");
Yes, you have access to angular outside of the app! And a last note, addClass() is available on angular.element because AngularJS comes with jqLite.
Further investigation
It looks like the above solution works if the class 'neutral' is being added in angular via the class attribute, but it looks like your app may be adding it programmatically with the ng-class directive after the DOM has rendered.
I wrapped your getElements() function in a setTimeout():
setTimeout(getElements);
This is unfortunately not a guarantee that the ng-class update will have taken place, but what it does is it executes the function after the previous digest cycle has completed and that appears to be working.
An even safer solution would be to use document.ready but again with the angular.element wrapper. This will ensure the initial DOM state has been rendered by AngularJS, including applied directives:
angular.element(document).ready(function() {
getElements();
});
EDIT: Update 3/9/20 -SOLUTION-
The solution proposed in the answer is almost identical to the setTimeout() answer given here. The only difference is setInterval() will keep executing the code every 5 seconds until you tell it to stop.
You can do this with the following:
var loadFunction = setInterval(function() {
var el = getElements();
if (el) clearInterval(loadFunction);
}, 5000);
And just return a bool in your getElements() like so:
function getElements() {
var list;
var found = false;
list = document.getElementsByClassName("neutral");
[].forEach.call(list, function (listItem) {
addNeutral(listItem);
found = true;
});
return found;
}
See: codepen.io/shaunetobias/pen/KKpXRxq
I want to attach a jQuery plugin function to an element on my site that exists only on one page. Currently, I'm using this conditional to prevent triggering the limiter function and throwing an error when there is no #advertiser_co_desc in view.
jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
var elem = $('#charNum');
if ($('#advertiser_co_desc').length) {
$('#advertiser_co_desc').limiter(180, elem);
}
});
On my website #advertiser_co_desc is present only on one page.
My solution does the job, but my qualm stems from the fact that the jQuery plugin code as well as the plugin function call presented above (they are both in the same file) get fetched by the browser and the condition is continuously evaluated regardless of whether a user ever gets to a page where #advertiser_co_desc exists.
Is the method I'm using optimal, or is there a better way to attach this particular JS only to the page where '#advertiser_co_desc` exists? Naturally, I wan to avoid adding my scripts in the same file with the PHP code.
Or you can wrap the plugin method as,
var _limiter = $.fn.limiter;
$.fn.limiter = function(limit, element) { // provide complete argmuments
if(this.length) {
_limiter.call(limit, element);
}
};
Make sure that plugin is loaded before this statements.
The best and optimal way to check existence of an element by jquery, is $('#advertiser_co_desc').length that you have used already. So no need to change your code.
I've noticed that RequireJS creates script tags in the tag as it loads modules.
Is there anyway to configure RequireJS to "tag" those elements w/ a class or an attribute of some kind that I could later target w/ jQuery later on?
e.g.:
var $requireJsScripts = $('script.require-script');
--UPDATE--
Ok.. I think I can get by on this little workaround for now. Thanks to this answer for the breadcrumb on require.s.contexts._.defined. I'd still like to hear if anyone knows of a way to configure RequireJS to do something similar to what was laid out in the original question...
var loadedRjsModules = Object.keys(require.s.contexts._.defined);
var $scripts = $('script');
$scripts.each(function () {
if ($(this).data('requiremodule') && $.inArray($(this).data('requiremodule'), loadedRjsModules)) {
console.log(this);
}
});
Looking at the source code, I don't see how RequireJS would allow adding anything custom to the script nodes at creation. The routine that creates them has no provision for it. The code that fleshes them out upon creation does not support it either.
There's an onResourceLoad hook considered part of the internal API. It could be used with the code you've put in your question instead of relying on require.s.contexts._.defined, which as far as I know is fully private and subject to change without notice.
I need to be able to determine when an object is created (not a DOM element -- a JavaScript object).
An answer to this question has some very useful looking code for creating observable properties, so you can have a function fire when a property changes.
In my situation I need to do something when the object/property is created, not an existing property changed, and my limited understanding of such matters did not help me figure out if or how I could use that code to do this after much squinting.
The situation is: page loads a bunch of scripts. Some of the scripts create things that are needed by other scripts, e.g:
ThisStuff = (function () {
// blah blah
return self;
} ());
Some other code needs to initialize this ThisStuff, whenever it's available, which may be after the DOM is done loading. The user doesn't actually need ThisStuff right away, so it's fine for it to happen whenever the script is done loading. So I would like to do something along lines of:
$(document).ready(function() {
wheneverIsAvailable(window,'ThisStuff', function(object) {
object.init(args);
})
});
I realize there are other solutions to this problem (changing script order, or loading scripts on demand) but those are difficult because of the architecture. So I'm only interested in a way to do this versus other solutions. If jQuery offers some such functionality, that's fine also as I'm using it.
You could have a setInterval checking a number of times a second to watch the specific variable. You can check whether it is created using obj.hasOwnProperty(prop). When it is created, you invoke the function, and clear the interval.
It might be dirty but it might also just work fine for you.
Edit: I coded this for you: http://jsfiddle.net/jhXJ2/2/. It also supports passing additional arguments to the function.
window.__intervals = [];
function wheneverIsAvailable(obj, prop, func) {
var id = (Math.random()+"").substring(2);
var args = arguments;
window.__intervals[id] = window.setInterval(function() {
if(obj.hasOwnProperty(prop)) {
window.clearInterval(window.__intervals[id]);
func(Array.prototype.slice.call(args, 3));
// Call function with additional parameters passed
// after func (from index 3 and on)
}
}, 1000/ 50);
}
wheneverIsAvailable(window, 'test', function() {
alert(arguments[0]);
}, 'Woot!');
window.setTimeout('window.test = 123', 1000);
This is a bit far-fetched but it might work.
You would need to use knockoutjs, a javascript library. It's awesome but is built for a slightly different purpose.
Anyways it has a dependentObservable thing which allows to fire up an event whenever a certain value changes. Now I know you want on creation but you can check whether your variable holds any value (other than what you provided initially), if yes then consider it initialize.
Let me know if you think this sounds feasible.
I need to override onClick method in the Tree.js. Is there any common way to override dojo/dijit classes methods?
I'm a bit confused, since you were already doing this in the last question you posted.
You've got a few choices, depending on what you want to do.
Clobbering method stubs
In the case of true stubs like onClick, it's potentially as easy as clobbering that method on your widget instance.
Programmatically:
var myWidget = new dijit.Tree({
...,
onClick: function(item, node, evt) {
/* handler code here */
}
};
Or declaratively (this is exactly the same as what you were doing in your last question):
<div dojoType="dijit.Tree" ...>
<script type="dojo/method" event="onClick" args="item,node,evt">
/* handler code here */
</script>
</div>
Connecting to method invocations
In other cases, perhaps you need to do something whenever a given method gets called, in which case you could use the widget's connect method (which is a nicer version of dojo.connect that will automatically clear itself when the widget is destroyed). In that case you could do something like this:
Programmatically:
//execute the given function whenever myWidget's onClick method is called
myWidget.connect(myWidget, 'onClick', function(item, node, evt) {
/* handler code here */
});
Declaratively, this can be done very similarly to the above, except instead of type="dojo/method", make sure you use type="dojo/connect"
<div dojoType="dijit.Tree" ...>
<script type="dojo/connect" event="onClick" args="item,node,evt">
/* handler code here */
</script>
</div>
Note that when you connect like this, your code will execute after the method whose invocation you are connecting to. If you need to do something before, your best option is probably to dojo.declare your own extension to the widget. If you need to go that far, I'll elaborate, but I think you'll likely be set with one of the above options.
Edit #1: Connecting the dots (no pun intended...oh heck, yes it was)
Since it seems that my comment appended to my answer to the original question was somehow not clear enough, here's a code block modifying the original code in that question based on the simple two steps exactly as I explained in that comment. The only tiny wrinkle is that the arguments passed to _onClick are slightly different.
<div dojoType="dijit.Tree" ...>
<script type="dojo/connect" event="_onClick" args="node,evt">
/* handler code here. In this case, item is accessible via node.item */
</script>
</div>
This solution may feel a bit sub-optimal since it involves connecting to a method that's suggested to be private. However, it's a way that should work regardless of whether openOnClick is true or not. If you are certain you're going to have openOnClick set to true, you could potentially write a single function, then connect it to both onClick and onOpen instead (both get passed the item, then the node).
Edit #2: Common functions, connecting programmatically
To answer your follow-up questions, I'd like to actually address them in reverse order - since if you are interested in connecting programmatically, it will actually make the other question easier to answer.
So first, to answer your connect question: you definitely don't want to be using dojo.byId, as that's not giving you the Tree widget, that's giving you some DOM node (probably the topmost) associated with the widget. As a general rule, dojo methods don't know anything about dijit stuff.
What you do want to be doing, is what I suggested above. Here it is applied as per the code you attempted. Also note that onClick has a capital C - another general rule: widget events use camel case notation, as a way to distinguish them from plain DOM events which don't.
var mytree = dijit.byId("mytree");
mytree.connect(mytree, "onClick", function(item) {
/* ... */
});
Now, to take that a step further and resolve your other inquiry, if you want to bind some common functionality to onClick and onOpen and onClose, you could define a function first, then connect it to both. This is one of the many things that makes JavaScript awesome - the availability of functions as first-class objects that can be easily passed around.
function handleClick(item) {
/* do stuff here.
Inside this function you can assume 'this' is the tree,
since connect will ensure it runs in-context.
*/
}
var mytree = dijit.byId("mytree");
mytree.connect(mytree, "onClick", handleClick);
mytree.connect(mytree, "onOpen", handleClick);
mytree.connect(mytree, "onClose", handleClick);
Now there's one important remaining question: where should we do this? The best place is likely inside a function passed to dojo.ready (or dojo.addOnLoad, same thing, ready was added as a synonym in 1.4) so that it will run only after:
The DOM is parsed by the browser
All dojo.required modules have loaded
If you set parseOnLoad: true in djConfig, all widgets defined in the document's HTML will already be instantiated
So, sometime after your dojo.requires, in script, you'd do this:
dojo.ready(function() {
/* code from previous example goes here */
});
Give it a shot.
Also, if you're interested in a bit of reading, I've actually written about a couple of topics I touched on in this edit:
Of Dijits and DOM Nodes
dojo.required Reading
You could use:
dojo.connect(tree, 'onClick', function(item) {
/** Your Action **/
});