ember-dialogs

Customizable implementation of alert, confirm and prompt modal dialogs with straightforward API.

Modal dialogs are driven by liquid-tether.

Demo.

Features

• API is close to native alert, confirm and prompt.
• Execute with JS or a simple template action. You no longer need to add a duplicate template entry every time you need a dialog.
• Use built-in looks or throw in your own.
• Can be effortlessly animated with liquid-fire.
• Blocks page scrolling while a dialog is active.
• Prompt supports placeholder and initial value.

Planned features

You are welcome to contribute!

• Use namespaced names for helpers #1
• A11y/ARIA #2
• Keyboard support: tabindex, cancel with Esc, etc #3
• Autofocus on the input field #4

Why

Native alert, confirm and prompt functions are very handy and simple to use, yet they have a few drawbacks:

1. Their looks aren't customizable, always out of sync with your app's design.
2. Their looks are different from browser to browser.
3. There's no backdrop.
4. They are a pain to test.
5. ⚠️ They block the JS thread, messing with animations and mouse/finger events.

A common solution is to use a custom dialog. Every time you need one, you typically add a duplicate entry like this:

{{! before ember-dialogs }}
 
<button {{action (toggle 'isConfirmDialogOpen' this)}}>
  Do the thing
</button>
 
{{#if isConfirmDialogOpen}}
  {{confirm-dialog
    message      = 'Are you sure?'
    actionOk     = (action 'doTheThing')
    actionCancel = (action (toggle 'isConfirmDialogOpen' this))
  }}
{{/if}}

ember-dialogs removes the redundancy, reducing the above boilerplate to:

{{! with ember-dialogs }}
 
<button {{action (confirm
  message      = 'Are you sure?'
  actionOk     = (action 'doTheThing')
  actionCancel = (action (toggle 'isConfirmDialogOpen' this))
)}}>
  Do the thing
</button>

Alternatively, you can trigger dialogs programmatically without having to update your templates for every invocation:

// Old-school, blocking approach
if (confirm('Are you sure?')) {
  this._doTheThing()
}
 
// ember-dialogs non-blocking approach
this.get('dialogs').confirm({
  message: 'Are you sure?',
  actionOk () { this._doTheThing() },
})

Installation

ember i ember-dialogs

Then add this snippet to your application template:

{{ember-dialogs}}

These components will no render anything until a dialog is invoked. They will be reused for every invocation.

Invoking a dialog from JS

Call alert, confirm or prompt on the dialogs service:

import Component from '@ember/component'
import { inject as service } from '@ember/service'
 
export default Component.extend({
  dialogs: service(),
  
  importantValue: false,
  userDidReject: false,
  
  actions: {
    toggle (value) {
      this.get('dialogs').confirm({
        message: 'Are you sure?',
        actionOk:     () => { this.set('importantValue', value) }, // Use arrow function to keep the scope
        actionCancel: () => { this.set('userDidReject', true) },
      })
    }
  }
})

Alternatively, you can leverage the fact that ember-dialogs methods return a promise:

    toggle (value) {
      this
        .get('dialogs')
        .confirm({message: 'Are you sure?'})
        .then(() => { this.set('importantValue', value) })
        .catch(() => { this.set('userDidReject', true) },
      })
    }

Note: these example use modern import paths available in newer Ember versions.

Invoking a dialog from a template

Use alert, confirm or prompt helper:

import Component from '@ember/component'
import { inject as service } from '@ember/service'
 
export default Component.extend({
  dialogs: service(),
  
  importantValue: false,
})

<a href {{action (confirm
  message  = 'Are you sure?'
  actionOk = (toggle 'importantValue' this)
)}}>
  Toggle
</a>

Note: this example uses the toggle helper from ember-composable-helpers.

Arguments

Both methods and helpers accept a single arguments with a hash of values:

Argument	Type	Default value	Description
message	String		Text to appear in the dialog.
actionOk	Closure action, function or null	null	Action to execute when user presses OK.
actionCancel	Closure action, function or null	null	Action to execute when user presses Cancel (not applicable for alert).
labelOk	String	'OK'	Text to appear on the OK button.
labelCancel	String	'Cancel'	Text to appear on the Cancel button (not applicable for alert).
cancelVisible	Boolean	true	Whether to show the Cancel button (applicable only for prompt).
value	String	''	Initial value for the input of prompt.
placeholder	String	''	Placeholder for the input of prompt.
backdrop	Boolean	true	Whether to render the backdrop.
backdropClickable	Boolean	true	Whether the backdrop triggers an action (actionOk for alert, actionCancel for confirm and prompt .
blockScrolling	Boolean	true	Whether to block page scrolling while the dialog is active.

Note: clicking backdrop triggers actionOk for alert and actionCancel for confirm/prompt. actionCancel will not be triggered in prompt mode if cancelVisible is disabled.

Animating

Use liquid-fire to apply transitions.

You can target the backdrop with this.hasClass('ember-dialogs-backdrop').

A dialog can be targeted with this.hasClass('ember-dialogs-dialogTether').

You can distinguish dialog type with this.toValue(str), values are 'alert', 'confirm' and 'prompt'.

In app/transitions.js:

this.transition(
  this.hasClass('ember-dialogs-backdrop'),
  this.use('fade')
)
 
this.transition(
  this.hasClass('ember-dialogs-dialog'),
  this.use('toUp'),
  this.reverse('toDown')
)

Customizing

In order to throw in your own HTML for the dialogs, use the block form of components in the application template:

{{#ember-dialogs as |params|}}
  <div class="dialog">
    {{#if params.message}}
      <p class="message">{{params.message}}</p>
    {{/if}}
 
    {{#if (eq params.type 'prompt')}}
      {{input 
        class       = 'input'
        value       = params.userInput
        placeholder = params.placeholder
        enter       = (action params.actionOk params.userInput)
      }}
    {{/if}}
 
    <button
      class = "ok"
      {{action params.actionOk params.userInput}}
    >
      {{params.labelOk}}
    </button>
 
    {{#if params.shouldDisplayCancel}}
      <button
        class = "cancel"
        {{action params.actionCancel}}
      >
        {{params.labelCancel}}
      </button>
    {{/if}}
  </div>
{{/ember-dialogs}}

Here's a list of params available as properties on the yielded object:

Property	Expected type	Description
message	String	Text to appear on the modal.
type	String	'alert', 'confirm' or 'prompt'
value	String	Value for the prompt input field. Using it as {{input}}'value will mutate the bound value as user types into the input.
userInput	String	Same as value but passed through reads computed property. Mutating it does not update the bound value.
placeholder	String	Placeholder for the prompt input field.
labelOk	String	Label for the OK button.
labelCancel	String	Label for the Cancel button.
actionOk	Closure action	Action to execute when OK button is clicked.
actionCancel	Closure action	Action to execute when Cancel button is clicked.
actionBackdrop	Closure action	Action to execute when the backdrop is clicked: either OK or Cancel depending on dialog type. Useful for an 🗙 button in top corner.
backdropClickable	Boolean	Whether the backdrop is clickable. Can be used to hide an 🗙 button in top corner.
cancelVisible	Boolean	Value of the cancelVisible property passed when calling a dialog.
shouldDisplayCancel	Boolean	False for alert, true for confirm, equal to cancelVisible for prompt.

Customizing the backdrop

The backdrop is a single HTML element which can be customized by applying CSS to .ember-dialogs-backdrop.

Testing with page objects

ember-cli-page-object is the recommended way of accessing the dialogs in your tests

You can import pages objects like this:

import {backdrop, dialog} from '<your-app-name>/tests/pages/components/dialogs'

Here's a list of nodes on the page objects:

backdrop // The backdrop element

dialog              // The dialog
dialog.message      // The text label
dialog.input        // The input field (only in prompt mode)
dialog.buttonOk     // The confirmation button
dialog.buttonCancel // The cancellation button (only in confirm and prompt modes)

Every page object node has the following properties and methods:

.$           // the jQuery object of the element
.exists      // whether the element exists
.index       // index of the element among siblings
.visible     // whether the element is not hidden with CSS
.text        // trimmed text content of the element, including child elements

.attribute(str) // returns the value of the given attribute on element
.click()        // trigger the click event on the element
.keyup(code)    // trigger the `keyup` event on the element, use http://keycode.info/
.blur()         // remove focus from the element
.focus()        // set focus to the element
.hasClass(str)  // returns true/false

// Applicable only to the input:
.value       // value attr (applicable only to the input)
.placeholder // placeholder attr text (applicable only to the input)
.fill(str)   // populate with text

Some usage examples:

assert.equal(alert.message.text, 'Are you sure?')
assert.ok(backdrop.hasClass('-ember-dialogs-clickable')

prompt.input.fill('I agree')
backdrop.click()
prompt.buttonOk.click()

assert.ok(confirm.$.offset().top > 100)

See our acceptance tests for some inspiration.

Nested usage

⚠️ Nested usage is not recommented. Use promise chaining instead, and you won't have to worry about what's mentioned below.

If you invoke a dialog from another dialog's action, the inner dialog will not show up.

This is because the outer dialog will cleanup after itself and hide the inner dialog immediately after it shows up. The inner dialog doesn't even get to render.

To work around this issue, wrap the inner dialog invocation with next. See demo app's nested action.

Notable dependencies

• liquid-tether
• liquid-fire
• jQuery
• ember-truth-helpers

Private API usage

This addon uses defineProperty from '@ember/object' which is marked as private in the API docs. If you know a better way to reset an overwritten reads CP, please create an issue or PR.

License

MIT.

Credit

Build by Andrey Mihkaylov (lolmaus) and contributors.