Event Handling

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In this Chapter

• Event Handling

Get the code for: chapter: event handling

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CanJS makes it easy to handle any any standard DOM event, such as a change event, in your component. To add an event handler, we have to make changes in two places:

1. The view template
2. The can.Component view model

Before we can work with an example, let’s get the restaurant details page working. When you go to the Restaurants page in your browser, then select a state and city, then click the “Place My Order” button next to a restaurant, the page will have a pmo-restaurant-details element without any content.

As we’ve discussed earlier, you need to include the component’s script file to register the component with CanJS. While we’re at it, we’re going to include the scripts for the rest of the components that we’re going to use. Let’s edit the index.html file by replacing these lines:

    <!-- Replace with order component script -->
    <!-- Replace with order details component script -->
    <!-- Replace with order history component script -->
    <!-- Replace with order list component script -->
    <!-- Replace with order phone component script -->

with these lines:

    <script src="components/order/order.js"></script>
    <script src="components/order_details/order_details.js"></script>
    <script src="components/order_list/order_list.js"></script>
    <script src="components/order_history/order_history.js"></script>
    <script src="components/order_phone/order_phone.js"></script>

We have just one more file we need to include before we move on. This section is going to introduce orders from a restaurant, and we’ll want to have an Order model. Find this line:

    <!-- Replace with order model script -->

and replace it with this line:

    <script src="models/order.js"></script>

Now, if you refresh the page, you’ll see the details for Spago.

If you click the “Order from Spago” button, you’ll find yourself with a menu, a name field, and an address field; however, we’re missing one important piece of customer information: a phone number. Let’s build a phone-validator component to collect this information, and add some event handling to validate the field as the user types.

There are two ways you can add event handling to an element:

• by adding an attribute with the event name prefixed by can-.
• by adding an attribute with the event name surrounded in parenthesis, e.g., (click).

<!--Example using can- syntax-->
<input name="phone" type="text" can-keyup="{setPhoneValue @element.val}">

<!--Example using () syntax-->
<input name="phone" type="text" ($keyup)="setPhoneValue(@element.val)">

Of these, the preferred method is to use parenthesis to surround the event name. Again, any standard DOM event is supported. More information about can.stache's event and two-way binding syntaxes can be found at can.view.bindings.

In addition to defining an event, you can pass certain predefined parameters to the method that handles the event. These parameters include:

• @element - The can.$ wrapped element where the event occurred.
• @event - The event object—or properties off of that object.
• @viewModel - If the element is a can.Component, the component's viewModel.
• @context - The current context.

You are not limited to these parameters. Any valid value can be passed in to the handler method. Separate method parameters with a space, e.g. {{myMethod arg1 arg2}}

Let’s open the components/order_phone/order_phone.stache file and add the following:

<div class="form-group{{#if error}} has-error{{/if}}">
  <label>Phone:</label>
  <input name="phone" type="text" ($keyup)="setPhoneValue(@element.val)">
  {{#if error}}
    {{#eq order.phone '911'}}
      <p>That's not your real number :-(</p>
    {{else}}
      <p>Please enter a phone number in the format 555-555-5555</p>
    {{/eq}}
  {{/if}}
</div>

Notice the <input /> element with a ($keyup) event handler. Whenever there is a keyup event in the input, the code in the value will be executed. We’re also passing @element.val to the setPhoneValue helper. Let’s add the component’s JavaScript to the components/order_phone/order_phone.js file:

var PhoneViewModel = can.Map.extend({
  error: function(){
    var phone = this.attr("order").attr("phone");
    return phone && (!/^(\d|-)*$/.test(phone) || phone === "911");
  },

  setPhoneValue: function(val){
    this.attr('order').attr('phone', val);
  }
});

can.Component.extend({
  tag: 'phone-validator',
  viewModel: PhoneViewModel,
  template: can.view('components/order_phone/order_phone.stache')
});

Here you can see the setPhoneValue helper function, which takes the val passed to it by the template and sets the phone property of the component’s order property to val.

But how do errors show up? The template is using the error property on the component, which looks like this:

  error: function(){
    var phone = this.attr("order").attr("phone");
    return phone && (!/^(\d|-)*$/.test(phone) || phone === "911");
  },

Notice that the error property uses this.attr("order").attr("phone") in its getter. Because of CanJS’s observables, CanJS is aware of us setting that value in our setPhoneValue helper, and thus only runs the getter again (called “recomputing the value”) when the value has changed. When the setPhoneValue helper sets the value, CanJS recomputes the error property’s value, which will return an error if you type “911” or anything that doesn’t look like a phone number.

Note that you can place as many event handlers as you need on an element. Adding event handlers in this way directly binds the events to the element. This can impact performance in situations where you have many elements to bind events to. For more performant event binding, you can use the can.Component’s events property. Discussing this is beyond the scope of this introduction. See the API for more details.

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