Firing events on a popup window (ExtJS) - javascript

we're currently developing an application that makes extensive use of popup windows(*) and have run into an issue on IE (this has been reported before but I couldn't find any solution).
The problem is this: our main window M opens a popup window P and keeps a reference to it. P then registers an event handler on an object in M. When the event fires, IE8 bombs out with the following error message:
JScript object expected
ext-all-debug.js (Line 1735, Char 17)
Code: 0
which is the fire-function in EXTUTIL.Event.prototype. The code works fine in Firefox, Opera and Chrome.
I've provided a minimal example that produces this behaviour.
Any help is appreciated.
(*) Yes, there's a good reason for that. And no, Ext.Window is not an option.

Well, at least I got the tumbleweed badge. :-)
As it turns out, you can not use ExtJS to fire events across browser windows in IE. Condor from the ExtJS Community Support Team said:
Ext is NOT safe to be used across windows. Each window should have it's own Ext instance and communication between the two windows should only be done using primitive datatypes (String, Number, Boolean, Date).
This means that you can't register an event handler in a different window, because that would mean passing objects to the other window.
As it turns out, this is not entirely accurate (at least in IE7 and above). You can reference objects across browser windows. What you can't do is use the Ext event system.
The workaround I used is, instead of registering event handlers in P, to have M call methods in P that then fire the events "locally". It is, of course, not quite es elegant or flexible, but it does work nicely in all browsers. Besides, I think it is good practice to keep cross-window-communication simple and well defined. If you use event handlers you have to carefully keep track of what happens where, for instance you need to make sure you unregister all event handlers before the window is closed.

Related

Reliable click function in capybara with selenium

Sometimes the .click capybara function doesn't fire and it doesn't fail either because it assumes that it fired. So I looked around and found that .trigger("click") is more reliable with some drawbacks too.
But I read the github for the trigger() function and it says it doesn't work in selenium.
Is there an alternative function for a reliable click with capybara/ruby in selenium?
ex:
find(el).click
vs
find(el).trigger("click")
No, there is no alternative click function in Capybara with selenium (other than potentially executing JS via execute_script). It's not likely the click isn't firing, it's more likely that it is firing at the "wrong" location due to animation on the page causing the calculated location of the click to be out of date by the time the click actually occurs. In that case disabling animation during testing can often help. If it isn't a wrong location issue, and you can create an example that exhibits the behavior, report it to either geckodriver or chromedriver and they will usually fix it pretty quickly (as long as you provide an example that replicates it).
Sometimes, the element you are trying to click is hidden or overlapped, in those cases you have to use-
find(el).trigger("click", visible: false)
Hope that helps.

why is this click event failing

ok so i am stumped if you go to my site and click the right center "Take a Quick Tour >>>" ..i get this lightbox that appears and i want to close it programmatically and in firebug i can see the x is id "rokbox-close" but running this in firebug
document.getElementById('rokbox-close').click();
but i get this error
TypeError: document.getElementById("rokbox-close").click is not a function
any ideas how to do this
i can run this
document.getElementById("rokbox-close")
and get the element but the click function fails...i dont have jquery installed so i was wondering if there is a javascript thing i am missing
Not all browsers have a "click()" function associated with buttons and anchors and etc. IE does (I think), but (for example) Firefox doesn't.
edit — wow according to MDC, Firefox 5 will support this.
If you were using a framework such as jQuery, then that code might allow you to do what you want. (With jQuery you definitely can.)
(Also, strictly speaking, we're not talking about an event here. We're talking about the ability to trigger the event handling mechanism programatically.)
If you use simple JavaScript istead of 'click' use 'onclick':
document.getElementById("rokbox-close").onclick = youClickHandlerFunction
If you use jQuery use:
$('#rokbox-close').click(youClickHandlerFunction)
See more info here: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/introevents.html
Or here: http://api.jquery.com/click/
The click() function is something that is not supported by all browsers. You're probably thinking of the click handler that jQuery provides.
For a more complete view of why click() isn't universally handled, check out this link, which covers the long and twisty history of event handling across different browsers:
http://www.quirksmode.org/js/introevents.html

window.Event vs window.event

For some reason when fired through C# code by using the IHTMLElement2.focus() method call, an onfocus event will not set window.event (which will become null), instead some other object window.Event will get set with the event information. Is there a reason for this? I am using ShDocVw interface for InternetExplorer and this is the first time I have seen this issue.
Sounds like a typical microsoft bug. They often have a problem with case sensitivity since it has been onverlooked as a distinction since day one of the OS.
I would suggest maybe looking into this kb article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa703985(v=vs.85).aspx specifically the tabindex hooha which sounds like a joke, but what else would you expect.
Then I would suggest trying the 4th variant form of IHTMLElement particularly the onfocusin event as an alternative to onfocus.
But ultimately since you control the environment via the shdocvw object - I'd just map the window.Event object to the window.event object in your onfocus handler - one line of code never hurt no one - except for when that one line of code hurts someone with a stack overflow, buffer overrun or Out of Memory exception of course :D

The 'charCode' property of a keydown event should not be used. The value is meaningless

What is the straight JavaScript syntax to replace the jQuery's keydown event?
Lint is complaining so much that it's hard to read my Firebug console.
Since I'm developing a proof-of-concept for me only, I'm not worried about any cross browser problems - it only has to work in Firefox at the moment.
That's because charCode is indeed meaningless in the keydown event. Change the keydown event to a keypress event if you need to know the charCode.
According to DOM level2 Events:
The DOM Level 2 Event specification
does not provide a key event module.
An event module designed for use with
keyboard input devices will be
included in a later version of the DOM
specification.
So there is no standard concerning the key events. Currently all the browsers do as they see fit. If you are using a JS framework it should give a consistent value in all browsers (that would be the main point of the framework after all).
First, the others explained quite well the roots of your problem.
But for the record, answering your original question, what you need is addEventListener. This is a non-obtrusive, nice and modern way to attach events in Javascript. Works in every modern browser (so not under IE9, for those IEs you need attachEvent).
So for example, using addEventListener, you assign events like:
var elem = document.getElementById("fos");
elem.addEventListener("keydown", whateverFunction, false);
You can also use the simple way (elem.onkeydown=whateverFunction;), but I discourage you to do it. With addEventListener, you can assign several handlers to the same event, and you cannot accidentally overwrite another event you or a library/3rd party script assigned.
Change
$(document).keydown(function(myEvent) {
to
document.onkeydown=function(myEvent){

How to trace JavaScript events like onclick onblur?

Is there a way to debug or trace every JavaScript event in Internet Explorer 7?
I have a bug that prevents scrolling after text-selecting, and I have no idea which event or action creates the bug. I really want to see which events are being triggered when I move the mouse for example.
It's too much work to rewire the source and I kind of hoped there was something like a sniffer which shows me all the events that are triggered.
Loop through all elements on the page which have an onXYZ function defined and then add the trace to them:
var allElements = document.all; // Is this right? Anyway, you get the idea.
for (var i in allElements) {
if (typeof allElements[i].onblur == "function") {
var oldFunc = allElements[i].onblur;
allElements[i].onblur = function() {
alert("onblur called");
oldFunc();
};
}
}
You might want to try Visual Studio 2008 and its feature to debug JavaScript code.
If the problem is not specific to Internet Explorer 7 but also occurs in Firefox, then another good way to debug JavaScript code is Firefox and the Firebug add-on which has a JavaScript debugger. Then you can also put console.log statements in the JavaScript code which you can then see the output of in the Console Window in Firebug, instead of using alerts which sometimes mess up the event chain.
#[nickf] - I'm pretty sure document.all is an Internet Explorer specific extension.
You need to attach an event handler, there's no way to just 'watch' the events. A framework like jQuery of the Microsoft Ajax library will easily give you methods to add the event handlers. jQuery is nice because of its selector framework.
Then I use Firebug (Firefox extension) and put in a breakpoint. I find Firebug is a lot easier to set up and tear down than Visual Studio 2008.
Borkdude said:
You might want to try Visual Studio 2008 and its feature to debug JavaScript code.
I've been hacking around event handling multiple times, and in my opinion, although classical stepping debuggers are useful to track long code runs, they're not good in tracking events. Imagine listening to mouse move events and breaking into another application on each event... So in this case, I'd strongly advise logging.
If the problem is not specific to Internet Explorer 7 but also occurs in Firefox, then another good way to debug JavaScript code is Firefox and the Firebug add-on which has a JavaScript debugger.
And there's also Firebug Lite for Internet Explorer. I didn't have a chance to use it, but it exists. :-) The downside of it is that it doesn't a fully-fledged debugger, but it has a window.console object, which is exactly what you need.
It's basic, but you could stick alerts or document.write calls in when you trigger something.
The obvious way would be to set up some alerts for various events something like:
element.onclick = function () { alert('Click event'); }
Otherwise you have a less intrusive option of inserting your alerts into the dom somewhere.
But, seriously consider using a library like jQuery to implement your functionality. Lots of the cross-browser issues are solved problems and you don't need to solve them again. I am not sure exactly of the functionality you are trying to achieve but there are most probably plenty of scrolling and selecting plugins for jQuery you could use.
I am not sure on the exact code (it has been a while since I wrote complex JavaScript code), but you could enumerate through all of the controls on the form and attach an event that outputs something when the event is triggered.
You could even use anonymous functions to wrap the necessary information for identifying which event was triggering.
One thing I like to do is create a bind function in JavaScript (like what you can find in the Prototype library) specifically for events, so that it passes the "event" object along to the bound function. Now, if you were to do this, you could simply throw in a trace call that will be invoked for every handler that uses it. And then remove it when it's not needed. One place. Easy.
However, regardless of how you get the trace statement to be called, you still want to see it. The best strategy is to have a separate pane or window handing the trace calls. Dojo Toolkit has a built-in console that runs in Internet Explorer, and there are other similar things out there. The classic way of doing it is to create a new window and document.write to it.
I recommend attaching a date-time to each trace. Helped me considerably in the past.
Debugging and alerts usually won't help you, because it interrupts the normal event flow.
Matt Berseth has something that may be the kind of thing you're looking for in Debugging ASP.NET AJAX Applications with the Trace Console AjaxControlToolkit Control.
It's based on the Yahoo YUI logger, YUI 2: Logger.
My suggestion is, use FireFox together with FireBug and use the built-in Debug/Trace objects. They are a charm.

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