ActionView::Helpers::ScriptaculousHelper

• actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/scriptaculous_helper.rb

Provides a set of helpers for calling Scriptaculous JavaScript functions, including those which create Ajax controls and visual effects.

To be able to use these helpers, you must include the Prototype JavaScript framework and the Scriptaculous JavaScript library in your pages. See the documentation for ActionView::Helpers::JavaScriptHelper for more information on including the necessary JavaScript.

The Scriptaculous helpers’ behavior can be tweaked with various options. See the documentation at script.aculo.us for more information on using these helpers in your application.

• draggable_element
• drop_receiving_element
• sortable_element
• visual_effect

Makes the element with the DOM ID specified by element_id draggable.

Example:

  <%= draggable_element("my_image", :revert => true)

You can change the behaviour with various options, see script.aculo.us for more documentation.

Makes the element with the DOM ID specified by element_id receive dropped draggable elements (created by draggable_element). and make an AJAX call. By default, the action called gets the DOM ID of the element as parameter.

Example:

  <%= drop_receiving_element("my_cart", :url =>
    { :controller => "cart", :action => "add" }) %>

You can change the behaviour with various options, see script.aculo.us for more documentation.

Some of these options include:

• :accept - Set this to a string or an array of strings describing the allowable CSS classes that the draggable_element must have in order to be accepted by this drop_receiving_element.
• :confirm - Adds a confirmation dialog. Example:

    :confirm => "Are you sure you want to do this?"
  

• :hoverclass - If set, the drop_receiving_element will have this additional CSS class when an accepted draggable_element is hovered over it.
• :onDrop - Called when a draggable_element is dropped onto this element. Override this callback with a JavaScript expression to change the default drop behaviour. Example:

    :onDrop => "function(draggable_element, droppable_element, event) { alert('I like bananas') }"
  

  This callback gets three parameters: The Draggable element, the Droppable element and the Event object. You can extract additional information about the drop - like if the Ctrl or Shift keys were pressed - from the Event object.

• :with - A JavaScript expression specifying the parameters for the XMLHttpRequest. Any expressions should return a valid URL query string.

Makes the element with the DOM ID specified by element_id sortable by drag-and-drop and make an Ajax call whenever the sort order has changed. By default, the action called gets the serialized sortable element as parameters.

Example:

  <%= sortable_element("my_list", :url => { :action => "order" }) %>

In the example, the action gets a "my_list" array parameter containing the values of the ids of elements the sortable consists of, in the current order.

Important: For this to work, the sortable elements must have id attributes in the form "string_identifier". For example, "item_1". Only the identifier part of the id attribute will be serialized.

Additional options are:

• :format - A regular expression to determine what to send as the serialized id to the server (the default is /^[^_]*_(.*)$/).
• :constraint - Whether to constrain the dragging to either :horizontal or :vertical (or false to make it unconstrained).
• :overlap - Calculate the item overlap in the :horizontal or :vertical direction.
• :tag - Which children of the container element to treat as sortable (default is li).
• :containment - Takes an element or array of elements to treat as potential drop targets (defaults to the original target element).
• :only - A CSS class name or array of class names used to filter out child elements as candidates.
• :scroll - Determines whether to scroll the list during drag operations if the list runs past the visual border.
• :tree - Determines whether to treat nested lists as part of the main sortable list. This means that you can create multi-layer lists, and not only sort items at the same level, but drag and sort items between levels.
• :hoverclass - If set, the Droppable will have this additional CSS class when an accepted Draggable is hovered over it.
• :handle - Sets whether the element should only be draggable by an embedded handle. The value may be a string referencing a CSS class value (as of script.aculo.us V1.5). The first child/grandchild/etc. element found within the element that has this CSS class value will be used as the handle.
• :ghosting - Clones the element and drags the clone, leaving the original in place until the clone is dropped (default is false).
• :dropOnEmpty - If true the Sortable container will be made into a Droppable, that can receive a Draggable (as according to the containment rules) as a child element when there are no more elements inside (default is false).
• :onChange - Called whenever the sort order changes while dragging. When dragging from one Sortable to another, the callback is called once on each Sortable. Gets the affected element as its parameter.
• :onUpdate - Called when the drag ends and the Sortable‘s order is changed in any way. When dragging from one Sortable to another, the callback is called once on each Sortable. Gets the container as its parameter.

See script.aculo.us for more documentation.

Returns a JavaScript snippet to be used on the Ajax callbacks for starting visual effects.

Example:

  <%= link_to_remote "Reload", :update => "posts",
        :url => { :action => "reload" },
        :complete => visual_effect(:highlight, "posts", :duration => 0.5)

If no element_id is given, it assumes "element" which should be a local variable in the generated JavaScript execution context. This can be used for example with drop_receiving_element:

  <%= drop_receiving_element (...), :loading => visual_effect(:fade) %>

This would fade the element that was dropped on the drop receiving element.

For toggling visual effects, you can use :toggle_appear, :toggle_slide, and :toggle_blind which will alternate between appear/fade, slidedown/slideup, and blinddown/blindup respectively.

You can change the behaviour with various options, see script.aculo.us for more documentation.