Dialog

Declaring a dialog control

You declare dialogs directly under the <xh:body> element (or under the <fr:body> element for Form Runner forms) with:

<xxf:dialog 
    id="my-dialog-id" 
    appearance="full | minimal" 
    level="modeless"
    close="true" 
    draggable="true" 
    visible="false">
    
    <xf:label>Dialog title</xf:label>
    
    Content of the dialog (XHTML + XForms)
    
</xxf:dialog>
  • When you have appearance="full" on the dialog, you define the title of the dialog with the embedded <xf:label> element.

  • Inside an <xxf:dialog> you can use all the XHTML and XForms elements you can normally use elsewhere on the page. You can have other XForms controls, or show anything you would like to with HTML.

  • The attributes on the <xxf:dialog> are as follows:

AttributeMandatoryValuesComment

id

Mandatory

ID

The ID of the dialog. You reference this ID when opening the dialog with <xxf:show dialog="my-dialog-id">.

appearance

Optional

full or minimal

See details below.

level

Optional

modal (default) or modeless

Can only be used appearance="full". When set to modal the rest the page is grayed out and you can't interact with any control on the page outside of the dialog. When set to modeless you can still use other controls on the page.

close

Optional

true or false

Can only be used appearance="full". A close box "x" is shown in the dialog title bar when close="true". If you specify close="false", then you should provide a way to close the dialog, for instance by having you own "Close" button inside the dialog. This is typically useful when you want to force users to enter some data before proceeding and you don't want them to cancel the current operation by closing the dialog.

draggable

Optional

true or false

Can only be used appearance="full". When draggable="false", you won't be able to move dialog on the page by using drag and drop in the dialog title bar.

visible

Optional

true or false

Whether the dialog is initially visible when the page loads. When visible="true", the dialog appears immediately when the page loads.

neighbor

Optional

ID

Use only with minimal appearance. The id of the control next to which the dialog should display when opening.

class

Optional

CSS classes

Adds a class on the HTML element that contains the dialog, which you can use to style its content. Also, if amongst the classes you specify xxforms-set-height, then the height of the dialog is set to its max height, which is the viewport height minus 80 pixels.

You can set the appearance to either full or minimal:

  • The first screenshot below shows a dialog with appearance="full" while the second one shows a dialog with appearance="minimal".

  • In general, you will use the minimal dialog when you want to show a limited set of information which is related to a certain element in the page. The minimal dialog is sometime also referred to as a "drop-down dialog".

  • Some of the other attributes on <xxf:dialog> can only be used for the full or the minimal dialog. You will find more details on this below.

The xxf:show and xxf:hide actions

You open a dialog by using the xxf:show action:

<xf:trigger>
  <xf:label>Show Dialog</xf:label>
  <xxf:show ev:event="DOMActivate" dialog="hello-dialog"/>
</xf:trigger>

If the dialog is already open, no action takes place.

xxf:show supports the following attributes:

AttributeMandatoryValuesComment

dialog

Mandatory

ID

The ID of an existing dialog to open.

neighbor

Optional

ID

Use only with appearance="minimal". The ID of the control next to which the dialog should display when opening.

constrain

Optional

true or false

Whether to constrain the dialog to the viewport.

You close a dialog by using the xxf:hide action:

<xf:trigger>
  <xf:label>Hide Dialog</xf:label>
  <xxf:hide ev:event="DOMActivate" dialog="hello-dialog"/>
</xf:trigger>

If the dialog is already closed, no action takes place.

xxf:hide supports the following attributes:

AttributeMandatoryValuesComment

dialog

Mandatory

ID

The ID of an existing dialog to close.

Events

See dialog control events for details.

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