marionette.overlay-view

A view that covers your webpage, and is closed when clicked. Useful as backgrounds for dropdowns, modals, etc.

Installation

The easiest way is through npm or bower.

npm install marionette.overlay-view
bower install marionette.overlay-view

Be sure to iclude both the JS and CSS files in your application.

Motivation

A common interface element on client side applications is an element that blocks the user from interacting with the rest of the application. This is typically used when the user opens, say, a custom dropdown menu or a modal.

Rather than associating a new overlay with each dropdown, I like to use a single view that any other view in my app can use.

Basic Usage

// Create a single overlayView for your entire app
var overlayView = new OverlayView();

// Display it
overlayView.display();

// When the user clicks on it, it will hide itself and emit the `hide` event.
// You can use that event to close the modal / dropdown / do whatever.

Child Elements

The OverlayView intentionally has no template, and is intentionally not a LayoutView, but this doesn't mean that you can't place child views within it.

Rather than using the Region API, which is great for when views need to be swapped, I recommend that simply use the DOM API to append a child view's element directly into the overlay view's element. Then, when the overlay is closed, you can destroy the child view.

The reason I suggest doing this is because adding a region abstraction doesn't seem to add any benefit in this particular situation over existing DOM APIs.

This may look something like:

// Attach the dropdown element to the overlay view
overlayView.$el.append(dropdownView.$el);

// Destroy the dropdown when the overlayView is hidden
overlayView.once('hide', dropdownView.destroy.bind(dropdownView));

// Show the overlay view
overlayView.display();

// Click the overlay to destroy the dropdown.

Methods

isDisplaying()

Returns a Boolean indicating whether or not the view is currently displaying. By default, the view is not displaying.

display()

Display the view, if it isn't already displayed, by removing the .overlay-view-hidden class.

Returns the view instance.

hide()

Hide the view, if it's being displayed, by adding the .overlay-view-hidden class.

Returns the view instance.

triggerMethod Events

In addition to the normal Backbone and Marionette events, this View has a handful of custom events. These are fired with triggerMethod, so the corresponding method will be executed on the view, if it exists.

before:display

Triggered just before the view is displayed.

display

Triggered just after the view is displayed.

before:hide

Triggered jst before the view is hidden.

hide

Triggered just after the view is hidden.

click

Triggered when the user clicks the view itself, but not a child of the view. It's generally safer to use the hide event to track when the overlay closes, because it may not always close due to a click (for instance, when the user completes the task offered by the modal / dropdown).

click:child

Triggered when the user clicks a descendant element of the view.