Archive for January, 2015

I've added the ability to use the console with my status plugin, so you can do

$(console).status({
  run: $.post(url, {data: data}).then(
    function() { return 'Data Saved' },
    function() { return new Error('Data Not saved') }
  )
});


And the output will go to the console rather than to an element on the page.
For simple output to the console, this is far more complicated than console.log, but it works with the rest of the status options. Input is with window.prompt, since I don't know how to get input from the console.

See the demo.
See the source code, which depends on bililiteRange.

Modern browsers won't let synthetic events (triggered with dispatchEvent) execute their default actions (meaning the action that would occur if the event was triggered by a user action). The Event object has a read-only field called isTrusted that is false for anything but unmodified user-initiated events. These are called "trusted events", and I understand the justification, but they go too far. It makes it impossible to implement a virtual keyboard, since triggering keydown or keypress events aren't trusted and won't insert the character (the default action).

Fortunately, bililiteRange and especially bililiteRange.sendkeys can insert characters and do other manipulations on the page. So I created a jQuery plugin that uses bililiteRange.sendkeys to catch keydown events and implement them as well as possible.
Just include the source code and keydown events get a new default handler (so it can be cancelled by preventDefault) that looks at the key field. If it is a single character, that character is inserted at the selection. If it is more than one character long, it is assumed to be a sendkeys command like ArrowLeft and is sent as sendkeys('{'+key+'}').
I used the modern Event.key rather than Event.which, so I don't have to translate keyCodes. If you need to use the old way, see my keymap plugin.

Thus now, $('textarea').trigger({type: 'keydown', key: 'A'}) will work as expected, as will $('textarea').trigger({type: 'keydown', key: 'Backspace'}).

The actual plugin

Under the hood, this uses a very simple jQuery plugin that just calls bililiteRange.sendkeys(). It also turns '\n' in the string into '{Enter}', which I thought would be useful but has actually not turned out that way. Putting the '\n' in braces ('{\n}' prevents the replacement.
The plugin itself is:

$.fn.sendkeys = function (x){
  x = x.replace(/([^{])\n/g, '$1{enter}'); // turn line feeds into explicit break insertions, but not if escaped
  return this.each( function(){
    bililiteRange(this).bounds('selection').sendkeys(x).select();
    this.focus();
  });
};



Demo


$('.selectoutput').click(function(){
	$('.output').removeClass('selected');
	var index = $(this).parents('th').index();
	$('.output').eq(index).addClass('selected').focus();
});
$('div.test input:button').click(function(){
	$('.output.selected').sendkeys($('div.test input:text').val());
});
$('div.wrap input:button').click(function(){
	var tag = $('div.wrap select').val();
	$('.output.selected').sendkeys('<'+tag+'>{selection}{mark}</'+tag+'>');
});
$('.phonepad input').click(function(){
	$('.output.selected').trigger({type: 'keydown', key: this.name || this.value});
});
$('.output').each(function(){
	bililiteRange(this); // initialize the selection tracking
}).on('keydown', function(evt){
	if ($('#overridepad').is(':checked')){
		alert (evt.key);
		evt.preventDefault();
	}
}).on('keypress', function(evt){
	$('#keypress').text($('#keypress').text()+' '+evt.which);
}).on('sendkeys', function(evt){
	$('#sendkeys').text($('#sendkeys').text()+' '+evt.which);
}).on('focus', function(){
	var index = $(this).parents('td').index();
	$('.output').removeClass('selected');
	$('.output').eq(index).addClass('selected')
	$('.selectoutput').eq(index).attr('checked',true);;
});

<div>
	<table style="width: 100%" border="2" id="demo" >
		<thead>
			<tr>
				<th><label>
					<input type="radio" class="selectoutput" name="selectoutput" checked="checked" />
					<code>&lt;input&gt;</code>
				</label></th>
				<th><label>
					<input type="radio" class="selectoutput" name="selectoutput" />
					<code>&lt;textarea&gt;</code>
				</label></th>
				<th><label>
					<input type="radio" class="selectoutput" name="selectoutput" />
					<code>&lt;div contenteditable&gt;</code>
				</label></th>
				<th><label>
					<input type="radio" class="selectoutput" name="selectoutput" />
					<code>&lt;div&gt;</code>
				</label></th>
			</tr>
		</thead>
		<tbody>
			<tr>
				<td><input type="text" class="output selected" /></td>
				<td><textarea class="output"></textarea></td>
				<td><div class="output" contentEditable="true"></div></td>
				<td><div class="output" >This is not editable text</div></td>
			</tr>
		</tbody>
	</table>
<div class="phonepad">
<input type="button" name="ArrowLeft" value="&larr;"/><input type="button" name="ArrowRight" value="&rarr;"/><input type="button" name="Backspace" value="BS"/><input type="button" name="selectall" value="All"/><br/>
<input type="button" value="7" /><input type="button" value="8" /><input type="button" value="9" /><br/>
<input type="button" value="4" /><input type="button" value="5" /><input type="button" value="6" /><br/>
<input type="button" value="1" /><input type="button" value="2" /><input type="button" value="3" /><br/>
<input type="button" value="*" /><input type="button" value="0" /><input type="button" value="#" /><input type="button" name="Enter" value="&crarr;"/>
</div>
<label>Alert on keydown event: <input type=checkbox id=overridepad /></label>
<div class="test"><input type="text" /><input type="button" value="test"/></div>
<div class="wrap"><select><option>em</option><option>strong</option><option>del</option></select><input type="button" value="Wrap Selection"/></div>

<div id="keypress">keypress event.which:</div>
<div id="sendkeys">sendkeys event.which:</div>
</div>
<div style="clear:both" />

The phone pad keys use $().trigger({type: 'keydown', key: key}). The test button does $().sendkeys(textbox.value). The wrap button does $().sendkeys('<tag>{selection}{mark}</tag>'). Note that the trigger code does not affect the non-editable DIV, while sendkeys does.
The "Alert on keydown event" checkbox attaches a handler to the keydown event which calls event.preventDefault, showing that the text entry and keypress events do not occur.

bililiteRange.text() works well to insert text into ranges, but I wanted to be able to simulate other keys, ala Microsoft's SendKeys. bililiteRange.sendkeys() does exactly that. It basically executes text(string, 'end') but interprets any text between braces ('{key}') as a command representing a special key. For security reasons, the browser won't let you do anything outside of the text of the page itself, but I've implemented the following (the key names are from the proposed DOM3 standard)::

Backspace
Delete backwards
Delete
Delete forwards
ArrowRight
Move the insertion point to the right
ArrowLeft
Move the insertion point to the left
Enter
Insert a newline, with bililiteRange.insertEOL(). Warning: In contenteditable elements, Enter is flaky and inconsistent across browsers. This is due to the flakiness of contenteditable itself; I can't figure out what to do about this.

For backwards-compatibility with older versions, the following synonyms also work: backspace, del, rightarrow, leftarrow and enter.

So, for example, bililiteRange(el).sendkeys('foo') replaces the current range with 'foo' and sets the range to just after that string. bililiteRange(el).sendkeys('foo{Delete}{ArrowLeft}{ArrowLeft}') replaces the current range with 'foo', removes the character just after that string and sets the range to between the 'f' and the 'o'.

To manipulate the selection, use the usual bililiteRange methods. Thus, to simulate a backspace key, use bililiteRange(el).bounds('selection').sendkeys('{Backspace}').select().
To insert a '{', use an unmatched brace, bililiteRange(el).sendkeys('this is a left brace: {'), or {{}, as in bililiteRange(el).sendkeys('function() {{} whatever }');.

If anyone knows how to implement an up or down arrow, or page up/down, please let me know.

Other Commands

To make life easier for me, there are a few other "keys" that implement specific actions:

selectall
Select the entire field
tab
Insert a '\t' character. $().sendkeys('\t') would work just as well, but there are circumstances when I wanted to avoid having to escape backslashes.
newline
Insert a '\n' character, without the mangling that {enter} does.
selection
Inserts the text of the original selection (useful for creating "wrapping" functions, like "<em>{selection}</em>").
mark
Remembers the current insertion point and restores it after the sendkeys call. Thus "<p>{mark}</p>" inserts <p></p> and leaves the insertion point between the tags.

So to wrap the text of a range in HTML tags, use range.sendkeys('<strong>{selection}</strong>'). To create a hyperlink, use range.sendkeys('<a href="{mark}">{selection}</a>') which leaves the range between the quote marks rather than at the end.

Plugins

Adding new commands is easy. All the commands are in the bililiteRange.sendkeys object, indexed by the name of the command in braces (since that made parsing easier). The commands are of the form function (rng, c, simplechar) where rng is the target bililiteRange, c is the command name (in braces), and simplechar is a function simplechar (range, string) that will insert string into the range. range.data().sendkeysOriginalText is set to the original text of the range, and rng.data().sendkeysBounds is the argument for bililiteRange.bounds() that will be used at the end.

So, for example:

bililiteRange.sendkeys['{tab}'] = function (range, c, simplechar) { simplechar(rng, '\t') };
bililiteRange['{Backspace}'] = function (range, c, simplechar){
  var b = rng.bounds();
  if (b[0] == b[1]) rng.bounds([b[0]-1, b[0]]); // no characters selected; it's just an insertion point. Remove the previous character
  rng.text('', 'end'); // delete the characters and update the selection
};
bililiteRange.sendkeys['{selectall}'] = function (range, c, simplechar) { rng.bounds('all') };

So to have a reverse-string command:

bililiteRange['{reverse}'] = function (range, c, simplechar){
  simplechar(range, range.sendkeysOriginalText.split('').reverse().join(''));
};

Or, to annoy the anti-WordPress crowd, a Hello, Dolly command:

bililiteRange['{dolly}'] = function (range, c, simplechar){
  var lyrics = [
    "Hello, Dolly",
    "Well, hello, Dolly",
    "It's so nice to have you back where you belong",
    "You're lookin' swell, Dolly",
    "I can tell, Dolly",
    "You're still glowin', you're still crowin'",
    "You're still goin' strong"];
  simplechar (range, lyrics[Math.floor(Math.random() * lyrics.length)];
};

Events

After each printing character (not the specials, unless they call simplechar) it triggers a keydown event with event.which, event.keyCode and event.charCode set to the Unicode value of the character.
After the entire string is processed, it triggers a custom sendkeys event with event.which set to the original string.

Download the code.

See the demo.

See the hotkeys demo.

Dealing with keydown events is a pain, since the event object has always encoded the key as an arbitrary numeric code, so any program that deals with key-related events has something like:

var charcodes = {
	 32	: ' ',
	  8	: 'Backspace',
	 20	: 'CapsLock',
	 46	: 'Delete',
	 13	: 'Enter',
	 27	: 'Escape',
	 45	: 'Insert',
	144	: 'NumLock',
	  9	: 'Tab'
};

And so on. There is a proposal to add a key field that uses standardized names for the keys, but only Firefox and IE implement that right now. The time is ripe for a polyfill to bring Chrome and Safari into the twenty-first century, and I'd already worked on something similar with my $.keymap plugin.

So I updated that plugin to simply implement the key field in keydown and keyup events. Now just include the plugin and you can do things like:

$('textarea').keydown(function(event){
  if (event.key == 'Escape') { do something useful }
});

Continue reading ‘Rethinking $.keymap’ »