jQuery: Edit Content Inline on Dynamically Created Elements
Thursday, July 22. 2010
Unless you've been living under a rock while learning jQuery, everyone should have learned of the .live() call within the jQuery JavaScript toolkit. If you haven't, shove that rock aside - the .live() method takes the place of bind() (which is the more powerful, and base method of .click(), .blur(), etc...) for elements that are created dynamically at runtime. If you dynamically create elements after the DOM has loaded, and assume generalized JavaScript functions you've written to target these new elements (we'll presume you're targeting a "findMe" class) will work. Well it won't, unless you use .live().
Now that we have that out of the way, another one of jQuery's really great features that mimics why Wordpress is so great - all of the user contributed plugins, whether they're efficient or not, the fact that someone else has already created a solution for you, and is willing to share it with you (most likely for free) is awesome. One such type of plugin that I was looking for today, and knew I'd want to eventually use at some point, was an edit-in-place, or inline edit plugin - something that allowed me to edit content from within the DOM, such as in a DIV container (not in a textbox - or at least not initially rendered in one) dynamically.
In my case today, I was experimenting with dynamically creating elements that might need to be edited after being created. My first gut-instinct thought? Yup, you guessed it: .live(). I replaced the call to .bind() in the plugin's source and voilà! Nothing. It didn't work. The jQuery code in the plugin had been optimized beyond a point where I was comfortable to modify it further and understand what I was doing in order to make it work (which was kind of pathetic, but I digress).
So, how could I solve my little problem? Quite easily - I wasn't really thinking.
The call to instantiate an event on targeted objects after the DOM is ready is something like this:
I was scratching my head, trying to figure out if I'd have to uninstantiate all elements and reinstantiate the event bubbling throughout the DOM each time I created a dynamically created element. I was over-thinking it. Instead, all I had to do was create the event on that newly created element on the element's creation itself. Ooh, hard. I know, I know - I'm brilliant!
jQuery v1.4+ example code:
Easy and simple.
You can see how to further use and extend Arash Karimzadeh's jQuery Editable plugin, or if you'd prefer a more popular plugin for inline editing with jQuery, there's also Mika Tuupola's Jeditable plugin. According to the comments Mika intends to add .live() support soon, but until he does this should work just fine.
"Why did you choose Editable over Jeditable if Jeditable is more popular?"
In this specific case I didn't want to submit anything back to the server on edit, and it seemed like Jeditable was all about saving back to a data store somewhere. Editable just seemed simpler for what I was working on at the moment.
Happy programming!
Now that we have that out of the way, another one of jQuery's really great features that mimics why Wordpress is so great - all of the user contributed plugins, whether they're efficient or not, the fact that someone else has already created a solution for you, and is willing to share it with you (most likely for free) is awesome. One such type of plugin that I was looking for today, and knew I'd want to eventually use at some point, was an edit-in-place, or inline edit plugin - something that allowed me to edit content from within the DOM, such as in a DIV container (not in a textbox - or at least not initially rendered in one) dynamically.
In my case today, I was experimenting with dynamically creating elements that might need to be edited after being created. My first gut-instinct thought? Yup, you guessed it: .live(). I replaced the call to .bind() in the plugin's source and voilà! Nothing. It didn't work. The jQuery code in the plugin had been optimized beyond a point where I was comfortable to modify it further and understand what I was doing in order to make it work (which was kind of pathetic, but I digress).
So, how could I solve my little problem? Quite easily - I wasn't really thinking.
The call to instantiate an event on targeted objects after the DOM is ready is something like this:
I was scratching my head, trying to figure out if I'd have to uninstantiate all elements and reinstantiate the event bubbling throughout the DOM each time I created a dynamically created element. I was over-thinking it. Instead, all I had to do was create the event on that newly created element on the element's creation itself. Ooh, hard. I know, I know - I'm brilliant!
jQuery v1.4+ example code:
Easy and simple.
You can see how to further use and extend Arash Karimzadeh's jQuery Editable plugin, or if you'd prefer a more popular plugin for inline editing with jQuery, there's also Mika Tuupola's Jeditable plugin. According to the comments Mika intends to add .live() support soon, but until he does this should work just fine.
"Why did you choose Editable over Jeditable if Jeditable is more popular?"
In this specific case I didn't want to submit anything back to the server on edit, and it seemed like Jeditable was all about saving back to a data store somewhere. Editable just seemed simpler for what I was working on at the moment.
Happy programming!
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Comments
A superb and really helpful article!
I've pulling my hairs since last night regarding how to solve this. I tried calling $('.editable').editable(); everytime a new element was created. That worked, but introduced some further problem. Your's tip is nice and clean.
Thanks!