Reactive dropdowns for Meteor

A solid, fully customizable, reactive dropdowns package for Meteor.

Install

Install lookback:dropdowns from Atmosphere:

meteor add lookback:dropdowns

Usage

tldr;

{{ ! In a template }}
{{#dropdownTrigger name="uniqueName" }}
  <button>Trigger</button>
{{/dropdownTrigger}}

{{#dropdown name="uniqueName"}}
  <p>Hello world!</p>
{{/dropdown}}

Basics

A dropdown consist of a trigger and the actual dropdown content. They are wrapped in Meteor template helpers, in order to create contained components. The templates are:

• dropdownTrigger
• dropdown

Meteor's template helpers can take a bunch of arguments for customization, but the only required one for the dropdowns to work is the name argument, which takes a string which should be unique in order to identify the dropdown.

Simply use the templates dropdownTrigger and dropdown in order to wrap the triggering element and the dropdown:

{{#dropdownTrigger name="dropdownTest" }}
  <button>Trigger #1</button>
{{/dropdownTrigger}}

{{#dropdown name="dropdownTest"}}
  <p>Hello world</p>
{{/dropdown}}

You can also use a separate template for the dropdown and dropdown trigger content:

{{ > dropdownTrigger name="testDropdown2" template="testDropdownTrigger" }}

{{ > dropdown name="testDropdown2" }}

<!-- Somewhere else .. -->

<template name="testDropdownTrigger">
  <button>Trigger #2</button>
</template>

<template name="testDropdown2">
  <p>External content, yo.</p>
</template>

Note that dropdownTrigger needs the template name in the template argument.

Additional arguments

The dropdownTrigger accepts these additional arguments:

• hideOthers - Defaults to true. If false, other visible dropdowns won't be hidden when a dropdown is toggled.

The dropdown helper takes additional arguments for positioning and custom classes. The names are:

• align - Defaults to center. Can also be left or right.
• left - Left offset in pixels. Defaults to 0.
• top - Top offset in pixels. Defaults to 0.
• classes - Additional class names for the dropdown. None as default.
• direction - One of n, s, e or w. Where to position the dropdown around the element. Defaults to s.
• persistent - Defaults to false. Set to true if you want the dropdown not to hide when clicking outside it (on document).

{{#dropdownTrigger name="testDropdown3"}}
  <button>Custom dropdown</button>
{{/dropdownTrigger}}

{{#dropdown name="testDropdown3" align="right" top="20" left="10" direction="n" classes="custom-class another-one"}}
  <p>Custom dropdown.</p>
{{/dropdown}}

Markup & Classes

The dropdownTrigger template helper doesn't produce any extra HTML around your content. dropdown on the other hand produces the following HTML:

{{#dropdownTrigger}}
  <button>A trigger</button>
{{/dropdownTrigger}}

<!-- Produces: -->

<button class="dropdown__trigger">A trigger</button>

{{#dropdown name="testDropdown4" align="center" top="20" left="10" classes="custom-class"}}
  <!-- Content [..] -->
{{/dropdown}}

<!-- Produces: -->

<div role="menu"
  class="dropdown test-dropdown4 custom-class"
  id="test-dropdown4"
  style="position: absolute; left: XXpx; top: XXpx;"
  data-dropdown-key="testDropdown4"
  data-dropdown-align="center"
  data-dropdown-left="10"
  data-dropdown-top="20">

  <div class="dropdown-arrow"></div>

  <!-- Content [..] -->
</div>

As shown, name, align, left and top produces corresponding data-dropdown- attributes in the markup, handy for custom CSS styling. The dropdown's name will be the id attribute and applied as a class.

It is recommended to wrap both the trigger and dropdown markup in a container element with relative positioning.

Please note that the name template argument will be present as id and class in snake-case form.

Helpers

In order to detect active, opened dropdowns, the global dropdownIsActive helper can be used:

{{#dropdownTrigger name="testDropdown5"}}
  <button class="{{#if dropdownIsActive 'testDropdown5'}}dropdown--open{{/if}}">A trigger</button>
{{/dropdownTrigger}}

Data Contexts

Both the dropdown and its trigger inherits the data context from its parent:

Template.testTemplate.helpers(
  items: ['Foo', 'Bar', 'Baz']
)

<template name="testTemplate">
  {{#dropdownTrigger name="testDropdown6"}}
    <button>Dropdown with data</button>
  {{/dropdownTrigger}}

  {{#dropdown name="testDropdown6" classes="dropdown--menu" align="left"}}

    <ul class="dropdown__menu">
    {{#each items}}
      <li role="menuItem"><a href="#">{{this}}</a></li>
    {{/each}}
    </ul>

  {{/dropdown}}
</template>

One can build more complex components from this simple dropdown concept, such as filterables.

Persistent dropdowns

Dropdowns can be persistent too, which means they won't close when you click anywhere outside them. It's done setting persistent to true on a dropdown template:

{{#dropdownTrigger name="persistentDropdown"}}
  <button>Persistent dropdown</button>
{{/dropdownTrigger}}

{{#dropdown name="persistentDropdown" persistent="true"}}
  <p>
    This one is persistent.
  </p>
{{/dropdown}}

Animations

The dropdown uses the excellent Momentum package for creating natural animations when toggled. This is built on Meteor's UI hooks, since the dropdown content actually is removed from the DOM when hidden.

Two animations are included: spring and appear.

• spring is making the dropdown appear with a spring physics effect.
• appear is simply showing and hiding the dropdown as-is.

Changing default animation

You can change the default animation for all dropdowns by defining a new Momentum plugin and refer to it by its string name:

Dropdowns.animations.default = 'name-of-momentum-plugin';

Changing animation for a single dropdown

You can also change animation per dropdown basis. Just specify the animation attribute for the dropdown helper.

<div class="test-area dropdown-container">
  {{#dropdownTrigger name="appearAnimation"}}
    <button>Non-standard animation</button>
  {{/dropdownTrigger}}

  {{#dropdown name="appearAnimation" animation="appear"}}
    <p>Hey there.</p>
  {{/dropdown}}
</div>

Styling

No CSS styling is provided with this dropdown package – it's up to you to style the dropdown according to your needs. For a complete styling example, check out the _dropdowns.scss file in this repository.

API

This package exports a namespaced object: Dropdowns. By the power of reactivity, all dropdowns are based on an underlying data structure which stores its (quite minimal) state. When that data changes, for instance if the position is changed over an API call, the UI will react. The Dropdowns object has the following methods:

# This is the struct for a "dropdown" object, returned
# by Dropdowns.get('key')
{
  name: 'key'
  showing: false
  align: 'center'
  x: 0
  y: 0
  top: 10
  left: 0
  persistent: false
  element: -> # jQuery reference to the dropdown component in the DOM.
}

# Manually create a dropdown with a name.
Dropdowns.create('name', opts = {top: 10, left: 0, align: 'center'})

# Get a the dropdown.
Dropdowns.get('name')

# Hide a dropdown.
Dropdowns.hide('name')

# Show a dropdown.
Dropdowns.show('name')

# Returns `true` if a dropdown is currently shown.
Dropdowns.isShown('name')

# Toggle a dropdown.
Dropdowns.toggle('name')

# Hide all dropdowns.
Dropdowns.hideAll()

# Destroy a dropdown.
Dropdowns.remove()

# Destroy all dropdowns.
Dropdowns.removeAll()

# Manually set a position of a dropdown. Both x and y are optional.
Dropdowns.setPosition('name', {x: Number, y: Number})

# Hide all dropdowns except for `name` (can also be an array of names).
Dropdowns.hideAllBut('name')

# Get names of all persistent dropdowns
Dropdowns.getPersistentKeys()

# Returns a dict of all dropdowns
Dropdowns.all()

# Position dropdown <name> around a DOM element <reference>
Dropdowns.positionDropdown('name', document.getElementById('reference'))

Version history

• 1.5.1 - Use keyup event for closing all dropdowns.
• 1.5.0 - Introduce hideOthers template option on a dropdown.
• 1.4.2 - Expose Dropdowns.positionDropdown().
• 1.4.1 - Expose Dropdowns.all().
• 1.4.0
  • Use data-dropdown-key attribute when positioning dropdowns, instead of id.
  • Expose dropdown name on the name property of a dropdown object.
  • Add element() function on dropdown objects returned from Dropdowns.get(). element() returns a jQuery reference to the DOM element for the dropdown.
• 1.3.0 - Add support for custom animations.
• 1.2.1 - Add persistent option.
• 1.2.0 - Add support for dropdown directions. Note that this release removes the default top offset (10px).
• 1.0.0 - Stable release.
• 0.4.1
  • Fix: The properties x, y, top, left are now flattened (before, they were in properties position and offset respectively).
  • Fix: Said properties are converted to Numbers when creating a Dropdown.
• 0.4.0 Rewrite logic to be based on data reactivity instead of DOM state.
  • New: New API methods on the Dropdowns global.
  • New: New template helper for the dropdown trigger (dropdownTrigger).
• 0.3.3 Fix: Issue where a descendant element of a trigger would cause dropdown to hide.
• 0.3.2 New: Add .dropdown__arrow div to template.
• 0.3.1 Fix: Support snake-case for classes and ids in dropdown template.
• 0.3.0 Move foundational dropdown wrapper markup into the template.
• 0.2.0 New: Support for horizontal positioning.
• 0.1.0 Initial commit.

Tests

This package's API interface (methods on the Dropdown object) is unit tested. Those tests reside in /tests.

npm test

Contributions

Contributions are welcome. Please open issues and/or file Pull Requests.

---

Made by Lookback.