gesture-helper

a tiny touch & mouse library to help make tracking touch interactions more simple.

Gesture helper extends https://github.com/asyncly/EventEmitter2, and returns an event emitter. Events can be namespaced, per EventEmitter2. This means that you can bind to events like:

tap // (for simple tap / click events)
pan.** // (wildcard for all pan-related events)
pan.prestart // (immediate touchStart event - mainly useful for immediately blocking browser behaviour)
pan.start // (the beginning of a discernable drag event)
pan.preend // (fires just before gesture-helper's final pan-end logic)
pan.end // (the end of a detected drag event)
pan.all // (a progress event for any and all directions of finger movement)
pan.y.up // (a progress event as the finger moves up)
pan.y.down // (a progress event as the finger moves down)
pan.y.** // (wildcard for both up and down movement progress events)
pan.x.left // (a progress event as the finger moves left)
pan.x.right // (a progress event as the finger moves right)
pan.x.** // (wildcard for both left and right movement progress events)

In the interest of keeping the library small, unopinionated, and versatile - any preventDefault / stopPropogation / event bubbling related functionality is left untouched. This can be added to each application, depending on what you need.

All source touch/mouse events are returned inside all EE2 event payloads, as follows

{ ..., sourceEvent: e }

Eg. you can call ev.sourceEvent.preventDefault() as well as other native browser event functionality, as you need it.

Per EE2, the event handler name (eg. pan.y.up, pan.x.left, pan.all) is also bound to the listener function's scope as the property this.event. *Note: If you plan to access this property, please avoid defining handlers using arrow functions.

install:

yarn install gesture-helper
npm i gesture-helper

then:

import GestureHelper from "gesture-helper";
const gestureCtrl = new GestureHelper(document.querySelector(".el"), {
  ...options
});
gestureCtrl.on("tap", e => {
  console.log(this.event); // undefined
});
gestureCtrl.on("pan.all", function(e) {
  console.log(this.event); // 'pan.all'
});

demo:

to see this component in action, run:

yarn demo

optional settings (with default value):

  passive: false,
  capture: false,
  sensitivity: Number(5), // Integer: Px's movement to allow before capturing pan event
  swipeVelocity: Number(60), // Integer: Velocity threshold range for varied swipe detection
  maxTapDuration: Number(300), // Integer: Milliseconds of finger being on the screen before a tap event is ignored
  terminatePanOutsideBounds: false, // This will stop pan events when the cursor approaches the bounds of the hitzone. This helps to eliminate unproperly terminated pan events (zombie events).
  outsideBoundsOffset: Number(10) // How close the cursor can get to the edge of the hitzone, before the event is terminated early