dragop

This library provides a set of VueJS directives that can be attached to DOM elements to suport drag-and-drop features. The callbacks provide physical information (e.g. coordinates, elements), but also binding-defined logical information. You may chose to use any of the two, or both, to suit your needs.

The library is written in TypeScript and provides complete type definitions for all directive callbacks.

Why dragop

If you are looking for a simple component to use for a list of items that could be reordered by dragging, you may want to look into Vue.Draggable.

If you are looking for more flexibility and want to use the browser drag-and-drop API, but do not want to deal with its more nonsensical parts, you may want to look into vue-drag-drop.

Unfortunately, the browser drag-and-drop API is only implemented on HTML elements - in particular, it is not available on SVG elements. This is the reason why dragop was born: to offer a set of high-level Vue directives that work on any kind of HTML element.

Examples

Basic use

The most basic usage is to apply v-draggable to an element that can be dragged, and v-on-drop to an element that is an acceptable target.

v-draggable takes an argument that is the data you want to pass around. This can be anything from your model, or a constant.

v-on-drop takes an argument that is the callback to execute when a drag-and-drop operation is completed on the target element. This callback will be called with one argument, of type DragCompletedEventData. This notably includes the data provided in the initial v-draggable.

<ul>
    <li v-for="paint in paints" :key="paint" :class="paint" v-draggable="paint">
        {{ paint }}
    </li>
</ul>
<span :class="currentPaint" v-on-drop="onDropped">
    drop a color here
</span>

data: {
    paints: ["red", "green", "blue"],
    currentPaint: undefined
},
methods: {
    onDropped: function(evt) {
        this.currentPaint = evt.source.data;
    }
}

Running example on Fiddle, using HTML elements

Running example on Fiddle, using SVG elements

Feedback based on physical coordinates

To provide visual feedback during a drag-and-drop operation, the first thing to do is applying the v-on-drag directive on an element that is capable of providing the feedback (something we could call the "canvas", although not in the HTML sense).

v-on-drag takes an argument that is the callback that will be regularly called when a drag operation is in progress. This callback will be called with one argument, of type DragInProgressEventData.

DragInProgressEventData notably includes coordinates representative of the current drag operation. In the target property, x and y represent the offset from the v-on-drag element.

<div class="box" v-draggable v-on-drag="onDrag">
    {{ x ? x + ' :: ' + y : 'Drag me over myself!' }}
</div>

data: {
    x: null,
    y: null
},
methods: {
    onDrag: function(evt) {
        this.x = evt.target.x;
        this.y = evt.target.y;
    }
}

DragInProgressEventData also contains information about the elements subject of the operation. This can be useful if there are several elements that each define their own callback.

onDrag: function(evt) {
    dragOverSelf = evt.source.directiveHolder === evt.target.directiveHolder;
}

To stop providing feedback when the drag operation is complete, you can handle things in the relevant v-on-drop callbacks. In addition, you may want to have a handler with a wider scope for cases where the drag operation is aborted (it ends without landing on an element with v-on-drop). The v-on-drag-aborted directive is provided for this purpose.

v-on-drag-aborted takes an argument that is the callback to execute when a drag operation is aborted. This callback will be called with one argument, of type DragAbortedEventData. There is no restriction on where this directive can be applied, but for semantic purposes, we recommend applying it on the common ancestor of all the v-draggable items.

Running example on Fiddle

Moving rectangles in a SVG

In the source property of DragInProgressEventData, x and y represent the offset from the v-draggable element. This is typically useful for the scenario where you want to move items in a SVG canvas.