plone.app.jquerytools: A JavaScript repository from naro

Introduction

plone.app.jquerytools adds jquery.tools and some related overlay and form-handling JavaScript libraries to Plone.

plone.app.jquerytools was developed for Plone 4. Earlier versions could be used in Plone 3.x by adding a zcml slug and running its GS Setup extension profile. This version requires Plone 4.x.

Plone developers will wish to use plone.app.jquerytools to provide DOM popups, particularly if they require AJAX. There is extensive support for AJAX form posting. It's also useful for adding dateinput and forminput widgets that are HTML5 compatible.

The AJAX and AJAX-form support is Plone-specific, and is documented in this module. Dateinput, rangeinput, accordions, and tooltips are all unchanged from jquerytools, and the jquerytools docs should be consulted.

Contents

Introduction
Available resources
Overlay helpers

Available resources

jquery.tools plugins and widgets are packed into Zope browser resources:

++resource++plone.app.jquerytools.js

Default plugins and widgets used by plone. This resource is enabled by default with plone.app.jquerytools:default profile.

Included scripts: overlay.js, scrollable.js, tabs.js, toolbox.history.js, toolbox.expose.js, tooltip.js

++resource++plone.app.jquerytools.plugins.js

Additional plugin and widgets which does not take much space and for this reason are packed together. This plugins are not enabled by default.

Included scripts: overlay.apple.js, scrollable.autoscroll.js, scrollable.navigator.js, tabs.slideshow.js, toolbox.flashembed.js, toolbox.mousewheel.js, tooltip.dynamic.js, tooltip.slide.js

++resource++plone.app.jquerytools.dateinput.js ++resource++plone.app.jquerytools.dateinput.css

jquerytools dateinput widget with style from first demo. Both scripts are added to portal_javascript and portal_css but disabled by default.

++resource++plone.app.jquerytools.rangeinput.js

jquerytools rangeinput widget. Added to portal_javascript tool, but disabled by default.

++resource++plone.app.jquerytools.validator.js

jquerytools validator script, which should help you with nice validation of your forms. Added to portal_javascript tool, but disabled byt default.

++resource++plone.app.jquerytools.form.js

Integrates the jquery form plugin to add support for AJAX form: handling. More about this below.

++resource++plone.app.jquerytools.overlayhelpers.js

not yet minimized) and ++resource++plone.app.jquerytools.overlays.css (Size: 1.9KB, not yet minimized)

Adds helper code for loading overlays dynamically and for handling AJAX forms based on existing pages with minimal setup. More about this in instructions below.

JS resources are minified, but uncompressed versions are available in plone/app/jquerytools/browser for reading/debugging purposes. To use them for debugging, edit plone/app/jquerytools/configure.zcml to temporarily specify files ending with .js rather than .min.js.

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.

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:

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

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

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

What's different? We're targeting <img ... /> tags, which don't have href attributes. The helper automatically 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:

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

Options

The complete options list:

subtype: 'image' | 'iframe' | 'ajax'
urlmatch:: Regular expression for a portion of the target URL. Target URL is determined by checking href, src or action attributes.
urlreplace: Replacement expression for the matched expression.
filter (ajax only): the jQuery selector used to find the elements of the ajax loaded resource that you wish to use in the overlay.
width: Width of the popup. Defaults to 60%. Overriden by image width for image overlays. Percentages are computed against window width, not parent.
cssclass: A custom css class to apply to the overlay. Ignored for inline overlays.
config: jQuery Tools configuration options in a dictionary.

For AJAX overlay forms, 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 get the overlay content.

When a form is submitted, the overlay handler checks the response for formselector. If it's found, the result is displayed in the overlay and form handlers are bound. If not, the 'noform' action is carried out.

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. Default action is to display the filtered response in the popup.

You may also supply as the 'noform' argument 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 and the response text as arguments.

beforepost

you may specify a function that will be called before the AJAX form posting. This callback will be passed the jQuery-wrapped form and the serialized form data. Return true if you wish the AJAX form handler to handle the event; return false if you wish to cancel the submit.

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. Second argument is data_parent object, which contains overlay configuration and other useful data in the jQuery 'data' resource. This callback occurs before any other processing of the response. The callback function's return value is ignored.

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 as a 'filter' option. 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:

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

The filter code causes the overlay handler to load only a portion of the AJAX-loaded HTML into the overlay, picking up only what's inside the #content div. If you don't specify a filter, you'll get everything inside the body section of the page -- not usually what you want.

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

NOTE: the "ajax_load" query string argument is automatically added to AJAX urls and may be used in templates to determine which resources are shipped for AJAX overlays. Plone 4's main template uses this to exclude nearly all elements of the page outside the content area.

AJAX Forms

The overlay helper can automatically handle 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:

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

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

$('a#delete,a#rename').prepOverlay({
    subtype: 'ajax',
    filter: '#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.

See Products/CMFPlone/skins/plone_ecmascript/popupforms.js for several examples of using callbacks to handle tricky cases like confirming deletion of the current content item.

The jquery form plugin is used to do the data serialization for form posts. It provides a more complete serialization, including submit name/value and file data, than jQuery alone.

jQuery Tools Events

Event handlers for jQuery Tools overlay events may be set in via the optional "config" argument, which is passed as a dictionary. For example, to specify an onBeforeLoad event:

$('a#testimage').prepOverlay({
    subtype: 'image',
    config: {
        onBeforeLoad : function (e) {
            console.log('onBeforeLoad', this.getOverlay());
            return true;
            }
        }
    });

Useful events are specified in the jQuery Tools overlay documentation. Also, see the events documentation. Note that you should return true in `onBeforeLoad` and onBeforeClose handlers if you want the default behavior (opening or closing). Return false to prevent opening or closing.

jQuery Tools passes the event as a parameter when it calls the event handlers. this will be the jqt API object, which has getOverlay() and getTrigger() methods.

naro/plone.app.jquerytools