plone.app.jquerytools 1.0b14

Overlay Helpers

plone.app.jquerytools provides a helper for handling various kinds of dynamic overlays, including overlays with forms you wish handled by AJAX.

The helper, jQuery.fn.prepOverlay, is a jQuery-style function: it should be used as a method of a jQuery selection object. The selection object is always a selection of trigger elements.

prepOverlay should be passed one parameter: a options object, which will often be constructed as a Javascript literal object.

Overlay examples

Let’s say, for example, that you want to make clicking on news-item photos open a lightbox-style larger version of the image. To do this, you’ll need to specify:

• A jquery style selector for a Plone element, e.g., “.newsImageContainer a”

• “image” for the load method (“ajax” and “iframe” are other alternatives)

• A regular expression search/replace to transform the href or src URL. In this example, we’re changing the URL to point to the preview-sized image. So, our search/replace pair is “/image_view_fullscreen” and “_preview”.

• You could also specify additional overlay configuration parameters.

The code:

jq('.newsImageContainer a')
    .prepOverlay({
         subtype:'image',
         urlmatch:'/image_view_fullscreen$',urlreplace:'_preview'
        });

Another quick example, one that provides full-image popups for images placed via kupu:

jq('img.image-right,img.image-left,img.image-inline')
    .prepOverlay({
        subtype:'image',
        urlmatch:'/image_.+$',urlreplace:''
        });

What’s different? We’re targeting <img … /> tags, which don’t have href attributes. the helper picks up the target URL from the src attribute, so that we can have a popup view of image elements that aren’t linked to that view. Note also that we’re using a real regular expression in the search/replace so that we can strip off image_preview, image_mini, etc.

And, a configuration to put the site map in an iframe popup with expose settings, picking up the target from an href:

jq('#siteaction-sitemap a')
    .prepOverlay({
        subtype:'iframe',
        config:{expose:{color:'#00f'}}
        });

Options

The complete options list:

• subtype: ‘image’ | ‘iframe’ | ‘ajax’

• selector: the JQuery selector to find your elements

• urlmatch: Regular expression for a portion of the target URL

• urlreplace: Replacement expression for the matched expression

• width: Width of the popup. Leave unset to determine through CSS. Overriden by image width for image overlays.

• config: JQuery Tools configuration options in a dictionary

For AJAX overlays, add the following, form-oriented, options:

• formselector: Used to specify the JQuery selector for any forms inside the loaded content that you want to be handled inside the overlay by doing an AJAX load to replace the overlay content.

• noform: the action to take if an ajax form is submitted and the returned content has nothing matching the formselector. Available actions include ‘close’ to simply close the overlay, ‘reload’ to reload the page, and ‘redirect’ to redirect to another page. If you choose ‘redirect’, you must specify the URL in the redirect option. You may also supply a callback function that returns one of these strings. The overlay helper will call the function with the overlay element as an argument.

• closeselector: use this to specify a JQuery selector that will be used to find elements within the overlay that should close the overlay if clicked. The most obvious example is a form’s cancel button.

• redirect: if you specify ‘redirect’ for the noform action, use the redirect option to specify the full target URL. You may also supply a callback function that returns a URL. The overlay helper will call the function with the overlay element as an argument.

• beforepost: you may specify a function that will be called before the AJAX form posting. The form submit event is passed to the function.

• afterpost: you may specify a function that will be called immediately after the AJAX load of the post response. The function will be passed an element containing the returned HTML as a jQuery object. This callback occurs before any other processing of the response.

AJAX

Some of the options allow use of AJAX to get content. When you’re loading content into an overlay or tab via AJAX, you’re nearly always going to want only part of the loaded content. For example, if you’re picking up a Plone page, you may only want the #content div’s contents.

To do this, just add a CSS (or JQuery) selector to the target URL. JQuery’s load method (which pipbox uses) will only pick up the content inside the selection.

For example, let’s say that you wish to display the standard Plone site map in an overlay. You could use:

jq('#siteaction-sitemap a').prepOverlay({
    subtype:'ajax',
    urlmatch:'$',urlreplace:' #content > *'
    });

The urlmatch/urlreplace code adds a selector to the end of the URL when it calls JQuery’s load to get the content, picking up only what’s inside the #content div.

If you don’t specify a selection from the loaded page’s DOM, you’ll get everything inside the body section of the page.

Some browsers cache AJAX loads, so a random argument is added to URLs.

AJAX Forms

The overlay helper can automatically handle having forms that are within the overlay by making an AJAX post action, then replacing the overlay content with the results.

Specify forms for this handling with the “formselector” option. The content filter specified in the original overlay is reused.

For example, if you wished to handle the standard Plone contact form in an overlay, you could specify:

jq('#siteaction-contact a').prepOverlay({
    subtype:'ajax',
    urlmatch:'$', urlreplace:' #content>*',
    formselector:'form'
    });

Another example: using popups for the delete confirmation and rename forms (from the action menu):

jq('a#delete,a#rename').prepOverlay({
    subtype:'ajax',
    urlmatch:'$', urlreplace:' #region-content',
    'closeselector':'[name=form.button.Cancel]'
    });

There are a couple of differences here. First, there is no form selector specified; that’s because we don’t want to install an ajax submit handler when we may be renaming or deleting the displayed object. Second, we specify a close selector so that pushing the cancel button will close the overlay without bothering to submit the form.

Limitations: Forms may not include file fields, as the current marshaling strategy isn’t adequate to deal with them. Changelog =========

1.0b14 - 2010-10-27

• Add beforepost and afterpost callback options for ajax forms.

• Change reload strategy to set location to current href rather than using reload, which can cause repost queries on some browsers. [smcmahon]

1.0b13 - 2010-01-22

• Fixed marshaling of submit buttons on AJAX submit when form has multiple buttons. [smcmahon]

1.0b12 - 2010-01-11

• Allow noform and redirect options to be specified as callback functions. This will allow building in more smarts about what to do when ajax forms finish. [smcmahon]

• Avoid clobbering the onLoad config option if it is passed to prepOverlay. [davisagli]

1.0b11 - 2009-12-27

• Declared all package dependencies and avoid unused imports inside tests. [hannosch]

1.0b10 - 2009-12-18

• Add plugins resource and graphics directory.

• Update jqtools to use tooltips 1.1.3

1.0b9

• Avoid overlay helper errors in Plone 3.x when trying to handle tabbed forms.

1.0b8

• Check ‘action’ attribute for url, enabling simple forms to open overlays.

1.0b7

• Initialize form tabbing on ajax form load.

• Marshall submit button values in ajax form submit, since jQuery doesn’t include them.

1.0b6

• Document use of overlay helper.

1.0b5

• Integrate overlay helpers originally developed in pipbox. These provide support for AJAX loads and forms.

1.0b4

• Advance to jQuery Tools 1.2.1

1.0b3

• Fix packaging problem that prevented easy_install of 1.0b2.

1.0b2

• Move to jQuery Tools 1.1.1.

1.0b1

• Initial release