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PublicLab.Editor
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Please contact plots-dev@googlegroups.com to get involved! We'd love to make this editor compatible with other platforms.

PublicLab.Editor is a general purpose, modular JavaScript/Bootstrap UI library for rich text posting, which provides an author-friendly, minimal, mobile/desktop (fluid) interface for creating blog-like content, designed for PublicLab.org (itself an open source project).

PublicLab.Editor provides author-friendly interfaces for:

We may include an extensible API for adding custom content modules, for example:

Some, or many of the above may be optionally based on Public Lab Powertags. We may also include:

Design process

Design updates are viewable on PublicLab.org.

You can try a very early, rough prototype here:

https://publiclab.github.io/PublicLab.Editor/examples/

Screenshot

Modules

The editor is built from different modules like:

Each manages its own UI and validation, and which report their contents via a module.value() method. The EditorModule encapsulates all the modules. It contains a WYSIWYG textarea, managed (by default) by Woofmark.

Default modules

The Title, MainImage, Tags, History, and RichText modules are on by default. To disable them for a more minimal editor, you can set them to false in the constructor options:

var editor = new PL.Editor({ 
  mainImageModule: false // disable the MainImageModule
});

Note: The MapModule is NOT a default module, i.e., you will need to explicitly set mapModule: true in order to properly enable it in the parent HTML file.

Module content

To input content into a module, the convention is to use that module's value() method, like this:

editor.richTextModule.value('hello there'); // sets the richTextModule's content

You can also use module.value() as a getter, like this:

var content = editor.richTextModule.value(); // get the richTextModule's content

editor.richTextModule.value(content + ' and then some'); // sets the richTextModule's content

To add a new field, or new behavior, extend PublicLab.Module or customize an existing module by extending it -- for example:

PublicLab.Module.extend({
  init: function(_editor) {

    this._super(_editor);

  }
});

Module output is collected (by editor.collectData()) in the editor.data object -- a collection of values based on each module.key, assigning the value of module.value() to that key. So a module with a key of nid, for example, which returned 6 from module.value(), would result in editor.data being:

{
  nid: 6
}

Because of this, each module must have a key property and a value() method. Some modules, like the TagsModule, will return their own value added to the existing value of key, so that multiple modules may add to the tags property of editor.data.

Installation

To install PublicLab.Editor for development, you'll need NodeJS. You can get the detailed instruction on installing node and npm in its official documentation.

After installing node and npm run npm install from the root directory.

PublicLab.Editor uses grunt - the javascript task runner for compilation of the modules. To install grunt run npm install -g grunt-cli. If you get permission errors, refer this.

If you simply open the examples/index.html file in your browser, you will probably experience the CORS offline issue. To avoid this, you need to access the Editor using a HTTP/HTTPS domain in your localhost, through a server. One option is to install npm live server with the command npm install -g live-server.

Make changes to the files in the /src/ directory, then run grunt build to compile into /dist/PublicLab.Editor.js. This will use grunt-browserify to concatenate and include any node modules named in require() statements. You'll then be able to try it out by opening the project's directory in your terminal and running the command live-server. When the project opens in your default browser, open the folder /examples to access the editor. Run grunt and leave it running to build as you go.

You can also run grunt debug to have grunt-browserify to include Source Maps for easy debugging. This way you can locate the module from where the error is generating. This is for use in development only.

Setup

To use PublicLab.Editor, you'll need to follow the template provided here, and use the following constructor:

var editor = new PL.Editor({
  textarea: document.getElementById('my-textarea'),
  destination:        "/notes/create",   // content will Submit to this URL upon clicking "Publish"
  data: { // prepopulate fields:
    title:           "Your post title",
    body:            "Your post content",
    tags:            "nice,cool"
  }
});

To customize the @author and #tag autocompletes with your own suggestions, or with AJAX calls to your server, see the autocomplete example in /examples/autocomplete.html.

The editor toolbar comes in two different formats. You can use a smaller version by using a size property in the constructor. Refer to example given in /examples/comment.html

Dependencies

As of v1, PublicLab.Editor requires jQuery to be included on the page, and some external jQuery plugins for the TagsModule and MainImageModule:

<script src="../node_modules/jquery/dist/jquery.min.js"></script>

<!-- required for TagsModule -->
<script src="../node_modules/typeahead.js/dist/typeahead.jquery.js"></script>
<script src="../node_modules/typeahead.js/dist/bloodhound.js"></script>
<script src="../node_modules/bootstrap-tokenfield/dist/bootstrap-tokenfield.js"></script>

<!-- required for MainImageModule -->
<script src="../node_modules/blueimp-file-upload/js/vendor/jquery.ui.widget.js"></script>
<script src="../node_modules/blueimp-file-upload/js/jquery.iframe-transport.js"></script>
<script src="../node_modules/blueimp-file-upload/js/jquery.fileupload.js"></script>

These used to be compiled into PublicLab.Editor but are now external so that jQuery does not get included twice when using the editor in a page which already has `jQuery.

Server

PublicLab.Editor expects a response from the server upon sending a request to destination that is a URL which it will follow.

Creating a mock server

Modules

Various modules have different configurable options to be added to the options object, as seen in the Integration section.

Rich Text Module

The Rich Text module is built around a custom fork of the Woofmark editor.

formats -- provide an array of strings specifying allowed file extensions that may be uploaded inline in the rich text input area:

var editor = new PL.Editor({
  textarea: document.getElementById('my-textarea'),
  richTextModule: {
    formats: ['xml', 'pdf', 'csv', 'stl']
  }
});

Rich Text shortcodes

The Public Lab website makes use of a “short-code” syntax, similar to WordPress’s short-codes convention, in which text in the format [notes:water-quality] (for example) generates a dynamically-populated table of content from the website, in this case under the topic "water-quality". The Editor allows for these types of inserts and deals with them in different ways, either displaying them as editable blocks, or inserting them via special buttons.

Read more about the different types of inserts, how they work, and what they look like at https://publiclab.org/power-tags#Inline+power+tags https://publiclab.org/advanced-grids, and https://publiclab.org/notes/liz/08-30-2016/check-out-these-activity-grids.

Atwho.js Data Module

At.js is essentially an autocompletion library to autocomplete mentions, smileys etc. just like you see on Github. It can be used to implement the following functionalities:

We currently employ the At.js library to autocomplete authors, wiki pages, and emojis, by wiring them to the "@", "#", and ":" symbols respectively. Refer to the demonstration below for a better insight as to how this works.

atwho_js

Usage and code snippets

  1. Assuming that you have an installed copy of At.js in your node modules, firstly, you need to include the minified CSS and JS builds and the emojis source file, emoji.js to your parent HTML.
<link
      href="../node_modules/at.js/dist/css/jquery.atwho.min.css"
      rel="stylesheet"
    />
    <script src="../node_modules/at.js/dist/js/jquery.atwho.min.js"></script>
    <script src="data/emoji.js"></script>
  1. Include the At.js data module script from ./examples/data/atwho.PLE.jsinto your parent HTML.
<script src="data/atwho.PLE.js"></script>

  at: "@",
  callbacks: {
    beforeInsert: function(value, obj) {
      username = value.slice(1);    // remove ambiguous first character
      value = "<a href='https://publiclab.org/profile/" + username + "' target='_blank'>" + value + "</a>";     //  render value as a link
      return value;
    },
    remoteFilter: function(query, callback) {
      $.getJSON(
        "https://publiclab.org/api/srch/profiles?query=" + query, {},     //  send user query to PL servers
        function(data) {
          if (data.hasOwnProperty("items") && data.items.length > 0) {
            callback(
              data.items.map(function(i) {
                return i.doc_title;     //  for every "item" return the author's name
              }));}});}},
  highlightFirst: true,     //  highlight the first suggestion
  limit: 4      //  limiter

  at: "#",
  callbacks: {
    beforeInsert: function(value, obj) {
      value = value.slice(1);    // remove ambiguous first character
      tag = value.slice(value.lastIndexOf("/") + 1);      //  retrieve tag name
      value = "<a href='https://publiclab.org" + value + "' target='_blank'>#" + tag + "</a>";      //  render value as a link
      return value;
    },
    remoteFilter: function(query, callback) {
      $.getJSON(
        "https://publiclab.org/api/srch/tags?query=" + query, {},     //  send user query to PL servers
        function(data) {
          if (data.hasOwnProperty("items") && data.items.length > 0) {
            callback(
              data.items.map(function(i) {
                return i.doc_url;     //  for every "item" return the wiki's url
              }));}});} },
  highlightFirst: true,      //  highlight the first suggestion
  limit: 4

if (e.key === ":") {
      var x = emoji;
      $(this).atwho({
        at: e.key,
        limit: 3,
        highlightFirst: true,     //  highlight the first suggestion
        data: keys,
        callbacks: {
          beforeInsert: function(value, obj) {
            value = value.slice(1);    // remove ambiguous first character
            value = x[value];     // retrieve respective emoji object's value from source
            return value;

Detailed documentation can be referred to at the At.js wiki pages. Checkout this link for a live demo!

Tags Module

The Tags module uses Bootstrap Tokenfield. To add tags after initialization, use:

editor.tagsModule.el.find('input').tokenfield('createToken', 'purple');

Map Module

To add Map module, pass mapModule: true in options. Also if you pass lat: XX and lon: YY in options it will show the map at coordinates [XX, YY]. You can optionally include a zoom parameter, by default the value of "5" will be used.

editor = new PL.Editor({
    mapModule: true,
    lat: 23,
    lon: 77,
    zoom: 5
});

Developers

Help improve Public Lab software!

To report bugs and request features, please use the GitHub issue tracker provided at https://github.com/publiclab/PublicLab.Editor/issues

For additional support, join the Public Lab website and mailing list at http://publiclab.org/lists or for urgent requests, email web@publiclab.org

Testing

Automated tests are an essential way to ensure that new changes don't break existing functionality, and can help you be confident that your code is ready to be merged in. We use Jest for testing: https://github.com/facebook/jest. The tests are written using jest and puppeteer.

To add new tests, edit the *test.js files in /test/ui-testing/.

To run the tests you can run npm run test-ui.

If you face any error while running the tests:

  1. Make sure you're not running them as a root user. If running them as a root user include args: ['--no-sandbox'] in jest-puppeteer.config.js (not recommended).
  2. Make sure you have all the required dependencies installed. For Debian systems: sudo apt-get install gconf-service libasound2 libatk1.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgcc1 libgconf-2-4 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 ca-certificates fonts-liberation libappindicator1 libnss3 lsb-release xdg-utils wget
  3. Upgrade your kernel.

Integration

Connect this editor to a parent server-side app, such as PublicLab.org or other servers.

The API we'll be working from will include several server URLs, which we'll be building into the file at src/adapters/PublicLab.Adaptors.js:

Tags integration

The TagsModule uses Bloodhound for tag suggestions. It can make GET requests to the server to fetch recent tag suggestion, which returns data in json format like /tags/recent.json. You can also give your own suggestions in an array. Refer to the example given in /examples/autocomplete.html.

RichText integration

Similarly the RichText module (which wraps the Woofmark adaptor) may make GET requests to:

These can be overridden within the options in a richTextModule object, like:

var editor = new PL.Editor({
  textarea: document.getElementById('my-textarea'),
  richTextModule: {
    tagsUrl:    '/tags.json',
    authorsUrl: '/authors.json'
  }
});

Title integration

The TitleModule can make requests to find "related" content and suggest it be attached. Documentation on this can be found at:

https://github.com/publiclab/PublicLab.Editor/blob/master/src/modules/PublicLab.TitleModule.Related.js

Compatibility

PublicLab.Editor uses jQuery 1.7+ or 2, and tests run on Node v5+. Other versions depended on are noted in the package.json file.