I use customized built-in components, extended from any HTML elements
(e.g., HTMLDivElement), for product search, multiselect, and tags input
fields. The idea is that people that without JavaScript could still use
the regular, non-customized, inputs.
It turns out, this does not work so well: the CSS assumes that
JavaScript is enabled, and web components supported by the browser. If
one of these fails, then the controls are unusable—the multiselect is
too short, and the tags field accepts invalid characters that the
backend does not validate until it fails with a database error.
We discovered this because Apple does not implement customized built-in
components[0], hence it does not use my JavaScript code and forms,
the expenses forms in particular, are almost useless.
The way to fix this is to replace the regular inputs with autonomous
web components, extended from HTMLElement, using JavaScript, because
it would only do so with JavaScript enabled, and the CSS style would
only apply to these components, not the regular input fields.
However, currently i do not have time to do the proper fix, and have
to use a polyfill for Safari to support customized built-in components.
Shame.
[0]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2013OctDec/0801.html
I want this button, as well as the submit button, to be on a row below
the filters’ input, especially for quotes and invoices, that have the
most filters and looks weird with the button wedged in. Thus, i added
a <fieldset> around all the filters.
Closes#69
Sometimes, if the space is tight, the browser may break the radio button
and the single-word label for the toggle, which looks very weird.
I did not set nowrap to all radio button because the no wrap would
prevent long labels to break, and i am not sure if there is any such
radio option. I know that for the toggle there is not any.
We only want two statuses for expense: not yet paid (pending), and paid.
Thus, it is a bit different from quotes and invoices, because expenses
do not pass throw the “workflow” of created→sent→{pending,paid}. That’s
way in this case the status field is already in the new expense form,
instead of hidden, and by pending is not equivalent to created but
unpaid (i.e., the same status color).
With the new select field in the form, the file field no longer can
span two columns or it would be alone on the next row.
Closes#67.
This is mostly to have better contrast with the alternative row color
(#EDE95E), because with Firefox’s default link color (#1B6ACB), on Linux
at least, the contrast ratio is 4,5:1.
Closes#62.
We need to have contacts with just a name: we need to assign
freelancer’s quote as expense linked the government, but of course we
do not have a phone or email for that “contact”, much less a VATIN or
other tax details.
It is also interesting for other expenses-only contacts to not have to
input all tax details, as we may not need to invoice then, thus are
useless for us, but sometimes it might be interesting to have them,
“just in case”.
Of course, i did not want to make nullable any of the tax details
required to generate an invoice, otherwise we could allow illegal
invoices. Therefore, that data had to go in a different relation,
and invoice’s foreign key update to point to that relation, not just
customer, or we would again be able to create invalid invoices.
We replaced the contact’s trade name with just name, because we do not
need _three_ names for a contact, but we _do_ need two: the one we use
to refer to them and the business name for tax purposes.
The new contact_phone, contact_web, and contact_email relations could be
simply a nullable field, but i did not see the point, since there are
not that many instances where i need any of this data.
Now company.taxDetailsForm is no longer “the same as contactForm with
some extra fields”, because i have to add a check whether the user needs
to invoice the contact, to check that the required values are there.
I have an additional problem with the contact form when not using
JavaScript: i must set the required field to all tax details fields to
avoid the “(optional)” suffix, and because they _are_ required when
that checkbox is enabled, but i can not set them optional when the check
is unchecked. My solution for now is to ignore the form validation,
and later i will add some JavaScript that adds the validation again,
so it will work in all cases.
We have shown the application to a potential user, and they told us that
it would be very useful to have a total in the table’s footer, so that
they can verify the amount with the bank’s extracts.
This is for new users that do not start using the application from the
beginning of the current fiscal year and, therefore, need to create
invoices starting from a specific number.
I had to change the constraint on the currval to allow zero, otherwise
it would not be possible to set 1 as the next number, because users
can also not delete the row.
With this button, it is no longer necessary to set the quantity to zero
to remove, at least not with JavaScript. This is why i am using Alpine:
to use x-cloak and hide it from non-JavaScript users.
Although, i wonder if it would not be better to use HTMx for that?
I tried this already when i started adding filters, but i tried to use
AlpineJS for that, and could not because it would reset the context each
time i submitted the filters, due to HTMx replacing the whole content.
I realized that the only thing i need is some “flag” to show and hide
the form with CSS. I do not even need AlpineJS for that, but i used it
anyway because then i can use the x-cloak thing to hidde the toggle
button for users with JavaScript disabled.
Similarly, the body by default has that “flag” set in the markup, and is
removed when AlpineJS is initialized, thus if JavaScript is disabled the
filters form is shown nevertheless.
I want the `white-space: pre` to preserve the newline characters that
users may have used, but this prevents line wrapping and long lines are
not confined within the page margins.
`pre-line` preserves the newlines, but collapses spaces and tabs, and
wraps long text, which is more what i want.
I was hit with a couple of bugs: hx-on not properly de-initializing,
with a workaround in 43fffb68 and properly fixed with version 1.9.2;
and elements with naked hx-trigger did not work with hx-boost, as i do
for the tag inline form, fixed in 1.9.1.
The other bug fixed in 1.9.1, play well with other libraries that also
use the window.onpopstate, did not affect me, i believe.
They are almost the same as for the multiselect, except that it “clicks”
the option to “select” it, as this will trigger the replacement of the
<fieldset> with the whole product.
I had a lot of errors when trying to swap an element that has data-hx-on
attribute: it would tell me that it could not swap the bloody thing and
that t.onHandlers is not an iterable. I believe it also happened for
elements that did not have data-hx-on, but i am unsure at this point.
Apparently this is a bug introduced with version 1.9.0 of HTMx that as
of today is not yet fixed[0].
It seems that the problem that they keep the handlers created by
data-hx-on in an object, to be able to remove them afterward, but they
were looping the object with for(… of …) instead of for(… in …).
They will surely fix it in time, but since they will release a new
version, i have decided to change the minified code for now, as there
is no danger of replacing it with the new version—different file names.
[0]: https://github.com/bigskysoftware/htmx/issues/1368
I mainly did it for the new hx-on attribute, to click the update
button on recompute, but it does not seem to work as i think it does.
Anyway, there are some fixed bugs.
From the release announcement[0]:
## New Features
* Support for view transitions, based on the experimental View
Transitions API currently available in Chrome 111+ and coming to
other browsers soon.
* Support for “naked” hx-trigger attributes, where an hx-trigger is
present on an element that does not have an hx-get, etc. defined on
it. Instead, it will trigger the new htmx:triggered event, which
can be responded to via your preferred scripting solution.
* Support for generalized inline event handling via the new hx-on
attribute, which addresses the shortcoming of limited onevent
properties attributes in HTML.
## Improvements & Bug fixes
* A memory leak fix by @croxton
[0]: https://htmx.org/posts/2023-04-11-htmx-1-9-0-is-released/
I actually find more comfortable to select the product from the list
presented up until now, but this is mostly because i have very few
products and the list is not too long, so the idea is that with
JavaScript we will dynamically add an empty product row to the invoice
and then use the name field to search the product by name.
I have the feeling that i am doing something wrong because i ended up
with a lot of HTMx attribute for what i feel is not that much work,
but for now it will work.
I have added the `Is` field to `InputField` in order to include the `id`
attribute to the HTML element, because the HTMLAttributes are attached
to the `input`, not the `div`, and i felt like this one should also be
a custom element based on div, like all the others.
These is not yet any keyboard control to select the search results.
I am not happy with having the search of products in a different URL
than the index, specially since they use the exact same SQL query and
ProductFilter struct, but i did not know how else ask for a different
representation without resorting to the more complicated MIME types.
We have reconsidered the toggle thing and instead moved the selection
into a little menu on top of the input, like the input’s label does à
la Material Design.
I just moved the checkboxes into a new details, that works as a menu,
but i had to add the type="search" to the existing input in the tags
field, or the CSS would style the checkboxes as well.
I do not do anything when the checkbox selection changes because that
already triggers a POST to the server that returns the new HTML with
the checkbox changed, and the JavaScript only has to retrieve that new
structure, exactly as it does in the initial rendering.
Since we want to add a little description to the options, i no longer
can use the same SelectOption in ToggleField, even though i could have
reused the Group element, but that felt wrong.
I realized that using a select for just two, short, options is overkill:
the select and its options use a lot more real state than the two
radios, which can have tooltips (not yet, though).
Since i am going to replace this field with a custom element that has
a toggle-like aspect, i already added the is="numerus-toggle" attribute
and use it for stying the non-JavaScript field.
Apparently i was only testing that control with tab, because clicking
on any other non-focusable element (e.g., a table row) it did not add
the new tag and would not dispatch the “numerus-tag-out” custom element,
which is why i have seen it now.
This is equivalent to AlpineJS’s @click.outside, and i was already using
it for the multiselect dropdown. The isConnected check is because i
probably found some cases in the dropdown’s handler, but i can not
remeber now, but since AlpineJS does it too, i guess it is important.
I use the same pattern as HTMx’s “Click to Edit” example[0], except that
my edit form is triggered by submit and by focus out of the tags input.
I could not, however, use the standard focus out event because it would
also trigger when removing a tag with the mouse, as for a moment the
remove button has the focus and the search input dispatches a bubbling
focusout. I had to resort to a custom event for that, but i am not
happy with it.
The autofocus attribute seems to do nothing in this case, so i need to
manually change the focus to the new input with JavaScript. However,
this means that i can not use the same input ID for all the forms
because getElementById would always return the first in document order,
changing the focus to that same element and automatically submit the
form due to focus out. That’s why in this form i append the invoice’s
slug to the input’s ID.
Finally, this is the first time i am using an HTMx-only solution and i
needed a way to return back just the HTML for the <td>, without <title>,
breadcrumbs, or <dialog>. In principle, the template would be the
“layout”, but then i would need to modify everything to check whether
the template file is empty, or something to that effect, so instead i
created a “standalone” template for these cases.
[0]: https://htmx.org/examples/click-to-edit/
For some reason, i was looking at the value of the focus’ **target**,
which is not my search field at all, but whatever control the focus
changes **to**. It that new control is an input with value, then it
created a new tag with whatever my search field had, which could be the
empty string.
I realized that the event handlers that i was setting when creating the
tags input and the multi-select controls were not removed just because
these elements are no longer in the document, and kept firing again and
again.
I no longer can use an anonymous function, because removeEventListener
would not match it with the one passed to addEventListener. I also have
to bind the handler to `this` in order to keep having access to the
object, and, again, can not do it in the call to addEventListener, or
i would get a different function each time.
I added the check to see if the element is connected inside the
connectedCallback because the documentation warns that this callback
“may be called once your element is no longer connected”[0], and i
understood it to mean that the connected and disconnected callbacks
could be called our of order, thus it would be possible to add event
listeners that would not be removed—again.
I am not actually sure where i have to do the same for the rest of the
“internal” events.
[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components/Using_custom_elements#using_the_lifecycle_callbacks
This is mainly because i sometimes think that the tag is accepted just
because it is there in the input, but actually it is not being used at
all. I fear more people would do the same mistake.
Changed the invoice number field’s type to search to add the delete icon
on Chromium. Firefox does not add that icon, but i do not care; it is
still better that type="text".
Had to emit the change event to the numerus-tag field, otherwise the
form would not detect the change.
I also can not use keyup as a trigger because the changed modifier can
not be used in the <form>, as nothing ever changes, i do not know how to
trigger the form from children (i.e., data-hx-trigger on the <input>
does nothing), and i can not trigger for just any keyup, or i would
make the request even if they only moved the cursor with the arrow keys,
which is very confusing as Firefox resets the position (this may be due
the fact that i reload the whole <main>, but still).
In this case i have to use the same id for the dialog content in all
pages because, for now, there are a couple of forms that need to replace
it on submit—the new/edit form and the product selection form.
Unfortunately, HTMx does not have support for `formaction` attribute at
this point, so i had to use the workaround described in [0].
[0] https://github.com/bigskysoftware/htmx/issues/623
Mostly, the same problem as before: if the document title does not
reflect the application’s state, it becomes useless when there are
multiple open tabs.
In this case, however, i do not know how to tell HTMx to restore the
title to how it was before opening the dialog without a new request to
the server, that makes no sense when the dialog was closed without any
change whatsoever. Thus, i do it with JavaScript on the client side.
We do not have any design yet for errors and other notifications, so i
followed material design, for now, since we already kind of use their
input fields design.
This time i decided to use AlpineJS because there is not that much HTML
code, and the transitioning is way easier to do in AlpineJS than it
would be with plain JavaScript—not to mention the bugs i would
introduce.
This is more or less the same as a multiselect, except that now it
adds a list of string element that you write into the search element.
It is supposed to fetch a list of tag suggestions from the server, but i
have not implemented it yet.
oriol carbonell pujolàs
jordi fita mas