datalist-polyfill
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An extremely lightweight and library-dependency-free vanilla JavaScript datalist polyfill.
This is a minimal and library dependency-free vanilla JavaScript polyfill for the awesome datalist-functionality, that will bring joy and happiness into our lives :-)
Tested in Safari, for which it's mainly meant for, as nearly all of the others are already supporting it - quite - well: http://caniuse.com/#feat=datalist
No dependencies, written in plain JavaScript. Released under the MIT License: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
<option>stext, email, number, search, tel and url ...input[type=email] elements multiple attribute.options for datalist elements and .list for input elementsoption declarationsESC and ENTERThe plugin was designed with the following concepts kept in mind:
Just integrate both the CSS and JavaScript file into your code - et voilà.
You may optionally load via NPM or Bower:
$ npm install datalist-polyfill
$ bower install datalist-polyfill
Nothing really, just plug it in, it will work out of the box.
We're even also enabling the .options (for datalist elements) and .list (for input elements) properties according to the specs.
And you'd like to set a title-Attribute on the <datalist> HTML tag, as this would get used as label for the first, disabled entry within the polyfilling select on non-touch interactions.
In case that you'd like to dynamically add or modify / create your HTML code, you're even also good to go with this polyfill, as it's based on event delegation that makes your UI work easily - no (refresh) function to call after DOM manipulation or something similar.
option elementsIf you'd like to make a change to the integrated list of <option> elements, feel free to either remove or add them right away - the list would get generated on the fly after the user typed in something into the <input> field, so I've even also got you covered on this.
You could even also disable <option> elements by adding the disabled attribute to the <option> HTML tag if necessary.
See the polyfill in action either by downloading / forking this repo and have a look at demo.html, or at the hosted demo on JSFiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/mfranzke/s6awjfze/
<form> are missing, and I've left the latin letters and english expressions even also for the right to left text-direction example. But lets focus on the relevant tags that this polyfill is all about for the demo.<select> element to polyfill the functionality of the <datalist> functionality, as it brought most of the functionality, whereas I accepted that it doesn't behave and doesn't look totally equally.
<option> elements.multiple attribute, as this is most likely even already what you're up to regarding appearance, but it does violate the form follows function concept and results in - surprise - the possibility for multiple selections, which isn't always <datalist> elements kind of thing ... Than the size attribute came to my attention, which much better fits the requirements and behaves as designed quite perfectly.Supported by Christian, Johannes and Michael / @mischah. Thank you very much for that, highly appreciated !
Regarding the changes out of release version 1.6.0 to emulate the expected UI quite nicely, I was still struggling with using that hacky solution (multiple attribute) and even also of how to prevent multiple selections on the polyfilling select. Actually the attribute size came to my attention, which much better fits the requirements and behaves as designed quite perfectly. Chapeau!
Bugfix regarding the handling of the label values.
Restricted the polyfill to only work with relevant input types; we’d like to exclude the ones that even already need another polyfill to „work“ correctly or have a meaningful UI, like e.g. color or date-related ones, as those polyfills should handle the support of the datalist themselves depending on their own functionality.
As mentioned by @aFarkas within his review, option elements could be of some different formats. This release especially follows the spec regarding the aspect that "Each suggestion has a value and a label.".
Optimized the behavior to select the entries within the polyfilling select[multiple] on using the up and down arrow keys from the polyfilled input[list].
Introduced speaking variables for the different keycodes. And implemented some feedback by flow. As well as additional code simplifications.
This is so far the biggest and greatest update ! Depending of the feedback by Michael the visual appearance has changed and will better emulate the expected layout as in other browsers (on non-touch interactions). That for the script is creating the polyfilling select as a multiple-selection type, which emulates the expected „form“ better. And better positioning as well as styling the polyfilling select according to the input field, like e.g. even also set the polyfilling selects border-radius equally as the one by the polyfilled input.
Simplified the styling and got rid of the external CSS files / dependency. You could remove that one now. Yeah!
Added RTL text-direction support
Added support for multiple email addresses, separated by comma. And again, updated documentation slightly. And demo accordingly.
Simple code style modifications. Because style matters.
Added .options (for datalist elements) and .list (for input elements) properties according to the specs.
Further simplified the code, so that we could even skip the .matches() polyfill. Yeah. And documentation updates.
fixed another simple bug that lead to an incorrect index being selected - let's skip this, as it's not even the standard behaviour
some small corrections
better preselection on entries within the dropdown depending on the inputs value
added a package.json file
Small, but important typo. :-) Thanks Fyrd for mentioning this.
First release.
Personally I even also do like the "keep it simple" approach provided within the W3C specs even already: https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#the-datalist-element
But on the other hand this leads to an additional visible field, but doesn't emulate the (hopefully, fingers crossed) upcoming x-browser implementation and leaves unnecessary syntax for all of the clients that wouldn't even need it (anymore).
If you're trying out and using my work, feel free to contact me and give me any feedback. I'm curious about how it's gonna be used.
[1.9.0] - 2017-07-20
Regarding the changes out of release version 1.6.0 to emulate the expected UI quite nicely, I was still struggling with using that hacky solution (multiple attribute) and even also of how to prevent multiple selections on the polyfilling select.
size came to my attention, which much better fits the requirements and behaves as designed quite perfectly. Chapeau!FAQs
A minimal and dependency-free vanilla JavaScript datalist polyfill. Supports all standard's functionality as well as mimics other browsers behavior.
The npm package datalist-polyfill receives a total of 3,411 weekly downloads. As such, datalist-polyfill popularity was classified as popular.
We found that datalist-polyfill demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
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