YUI Library Home

Site Search (YDN & YUIBlog):

# YUI Library Examples: Container Family: The Module Control

# Container Family: The Module Control

This example looks at the "standard module format" used by many components in YUI to represent modular content on the page. The Module Control is a JavaScript representation of a standard module, one that provides some basic plumbing for interacting with the head, body and foot sections of a standard module. Convenience methods for showing, hinding and rendering the module are also included in the Module Control.

You're most likely to use the Module Control when building a custom widget; its importance in the YUI Library is as a foundation rather than as a UI control in its own right.

View example in new window.

Module #1 from Markup
This is a Module that was marked up in the document.
End of Module #1

## Using the Module Control

The Module control enables you to create a JavaScript object representation of a basic module of content. It can be used to manipulate existing content modules on your page or to create modules dynamically and append them to the DOM. All other components in the Container family have Module as their lowest-level base class.

Module is fundamentally a building block for other UI controls. The concepts presented in this example will form the basis for the way that you interact with all of its subclasses.

Module has three required dependencies: the YAHOO Global object, the Event Utility, and the DOM Collection.

In addition, the JavaScript file for Container must be included. If you will not be using any of the pre-packaged rich controls (Tooltip, Panel, Dialog, or SimpleDialog), you can include the core libary (`container_core.js`), which only contains Module, Overlay, and its supporting classes. Otherwise, the full library should be included (`container.js`). You can see what the full list of included files looks like below. Please note that your file paths may vary depending on the location in which you installed the YUI libraries.

<script type="text/javascript" src="yahoo.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="event.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="dom.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="container_core.js"></script>

Modules can be built using existing markup or dynamically at runtime using JavaScript. In this tutorial, we will construct two Modules: one from markup, and one from script only. First, we'll add the Module from markup to the document. The markup is in Standard Module Format, which consists of an outer container div element and three possible child div elements that represent the header, body, and/or footer:

<div id="module1"> <div class="hd">Module #1 from Markup</div> <div class="bd">This is a Module that was marked up in the document.</div> <div class="ft">End of Module #1</div> </div>

Next, we'll build the JavaScript for our Modules and wrap it in a function to be executed when the window is finished loading. The Module called `module1` will be associated with our existing markup; `module2` will be created dynamically from script. In this tutorial, we pass to the Module constructor the one required argument: the id associated with that Module's container element.

<script> YAHOO.namespace("example.container"); function init() { YAHOO.example.container.module1 = new YAHOO.widget.Module("module1", { visible: false }); YAHOO.example.container.module1.render(); YAHOO.example.container.module2 = new YAHOO.widget.Module("module2", { visible: false }); YAHOO.example.container.module2.setHeader("Module #2 from Script"); YAHOO.example.container.module2.setBody("This is a dynamically generated Module."); YAHOO.example.container.module2.setFooter("End of Module #2"); YAHOO.example.container.module2.render("module2"); } YAHOO.util.Event.addListener(window, "load", init); </script>

Note that to avoid using the global variable space, we are placing our example Modules into the `YAHOO.example.container` namespace. For more information about namespacing, see the YAHOO Global object.

Because `module1` is already in the document, the call to the render method requires no arguments. If that element wasn't present in the document, we would pass into the `render` method the element into which we wanted the module rendered.

To see our newly created Modules more easily, we can add a style block that defines custom CSS for the `module` CSS class. By default, Module doesn't come with any predefined styles, so it is up to you as a developer to provide any applicable styles. Our style block will define the `module` CSS class such that Modules and each of their child elements will have distinct border colors:

<style> .module { border:1px dotted black;padding:5px;margin:10px; } .module .hd { border:1px solid red;padding:5px; } .module .bd { border:1px solid green;padding:5px; } .module .ft { border:1px solid blue;padding:5px; } </style>

Finally, we will add some HTML buttons to the page and wire them (using the YUI Event Utility) to the Modules' `show` and `hide` methods:

<div> <button id="show1">Show module1</button> <button id="hide1">Hide module1</button> </div> <div> <button id="show2">Show module2</button> <button id="hide2">Hide module2</button> </div>

YAHOO.util.Event.addListener("show1", "click", YAHOO.example.container.module1.show, YAHOO.example.container.module1, true); YAHOO.util.Event.addListener("hide1", "click", YAHOO.example.container.module1.hide, YAHOO.example.container.module1, true); YAHOO.util.Event.addListener("show2", "click", YAHOO.example.container.module2.show, YAHOO.example.container.module2, true); YAHOO.util.Event.addListener("hide2", "click", YAHOO.example.container.module2.hide, YAHOO.example.container.module2, true);

## Configuration for This Example

You can load the necessary JavaScript and CSS for this example from Yahoo's servers. Click here to load the YUI Dependency Configurator with all of this example's dependencies preconfigured.

### YUI Logger Output:

Note: You are viewing this example in debug mode with logging enabled. This can significantly slow performance.

Reload with logging
and debugging disabled.

### Container Family Examples:

### More Container Family Resources:

- User's Guide (external)
- API Documentation
- Cheat Sheet PDF (external)

Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy - Terms of Service - Copyright Policy - Job Openings