ng2-tree is a simple Angular 2 component for visualizing data that can be naturally represented as a tree.
Ok, let's start with an installation - all you need to do is:
npm install --save ng2-tree
Now when you have ng2-tree installed you need to add it to your component's template and to the list of its directives:
// 1 - import required classes and interfaces
import {TreeComponent, TreeModel} from 'ng2-tree';
@Component({
selector: 'myComp',
// 2 - add ng2-tree to the template
template: `
<tree [tree]="tree"></tree>
`,
// 3 - add TreeComponent to the list of directives
directives: [BranchyComponent]
})
class MyComponent {
...
}
As soon as the previous step is done we need to give ng2-tree a model to render - this can be accomplished by populating its [tree]
attribute with an object that confirms to TreeModel
interface (see API):
// 1 - import required classes and interfaces
import {TreeComponent, TreeModel} from 'ng2-tree';
@Component({
selector: 'myComp',
// 2 - set [tree] attribute to tree object
template: `
<tree [tree]="tree"></tree>
`,
directives: [TreeComponent]
})
class MyComponent {
// 3 - make sure tree object confirms to TreeModel interface
private tree: TreeModel = {
value: 'Programming languages by programming paradigm',
children: [
{
value: 'Object-oriented programming',
children: [
{value: 'Java'},
{value: 'C++'},
{value: 'C#'},
]
},
{
value: 'Prototype-based programming',
children: [
{value: 'JavaScript'},
{value: 'CoffeeScript'},
{value: 'Lua'},
]
}
]
};
}
Apart from that I suppose you'd want to listen to tree events (for a full list of supported events look at API). No problem, this is also easy to do - for example let's add a listener for node was selected
events:
// 1 - import required classes and interfaces
import {TreeComponent, TreeModel, NodeEvent} from 'ng2-tree';
@Component({
selector: 'myComp',
// 2 - listent for nodeSelected events and handle them
template: `
<tree [tree]="tree" (nodeSelected)="logEvent($event)"></tree>
`,
directives: [TreeComponent]
})
class MyComponent {
private tree: TreeModel = { ... };
// 3 - print caught event to the console
private logEvent(e: NodeEvent): void {
console.log(e);
}
}
Voila! That's pretty much it - enjoy 😊
Feel free to examine the demo and its sources to find out how things are wired.
Here is the fully stuffed tree tag that you can use in your templates:
<tree
[tree]="tree"
(nodeRemoved)="handleRemoved($event)"
(nodeRenamed)="handleRenamed($event)"
(nodeSelected)="handleSelected($event)"
(nodeMoved)="handleMoved($event)"
(nodeCreated)="handleCreated($event)">
</tree>
Let's go through every element of this structure one by one.
tree
is the selector for TreeComponent
which you can import like shown below:
import {TreeComponent} from 'ng2-tree';
tree
has [tree]
attribute which need to be populated with an object implementing TreeModel
interface. You can import this interface as following
import {TreeModel} from 'ng2-tree';
Here is the definition of TreeModel interface:
interface TreeModel {
value: string | RenamableNode;
children?: Array<TreeModel>;
}
As you can see it is recursive and can be represented as the following object:
{
value: 'Programming languages by programming paradigm',
children: [
{
value: 'Object-oriented programming',
children: [
{value: 'Java'},
{value: 'C++'},
{value: 'C#'},
]
},
{
value: 'Prototype-based programming',
children: [
{value: 'JavaScript'},
{value: 'CoffeeScript'},
{value: 'Lua'},
]
}
]
}
Property value
can be of type string
or RenamableNode
.
RenamableNode
gives you additional control over the way node is renamed and rendered (by rendered I mean its text representation). Here is the definition of RenamableNode
interface:
interface RenamableNode {
setName(name: string): void;
toString(): string;
}
Here is an example of such a node in the TreeModel
object:
{
value: 'Programming languages by programming paradigm',
children: [
{
value: 'Object-oriented programming',
children: [
{
value: <RenamableNode>{
name: 'Java',
setName(name: string): void {
this.name = name;
},
toString(): string {
return this.name;
}
}
},
{value: 'C++'},
{value: 'C#'},
]
},
{
value: 'Prototype-based programming',
children: [
{value: 'JavaScript'},
{value: 'CoffeeScript'},
{value: 'TypeScript'},
]
}
]
};
Here is the diagram that shows tree events' hierarchy
NodeEvent
is the root of tree events' hierarchy. It defines property node
that contains a receiver of the event's action (node
confirms to TreeModel
).
NodeDestructiveEvent
is the parent for all events that cause changes to a structure of the tree or to a node value.
It defines property parent
that contains an object implementing TreeModel
interface and gives context to the event's action.
You can subscribe to NodeSelectedEvent
by attaching listener to (nodeSelected)
attribute
<tree
[tree]="tree"
(nodeSelected)="handleSelected($event)">
</tree>
NodeSelectedEvent
has just one property node
which contains TreeModel
object of a selected node.
{node: <TreeModel>{...}}
NodeSelectedEvent
inherits its property directly from NodeEvent
.
You can subscribe to NodeMovedEvent
by attaching listener to (nodeMoved)
attribute
<tree
[tree]="tree"
(nodeMoved)="handleMoved($event)">
</tree>
NodeMovedEvent
has two properties node
and parent
both of which contain TreeModel
objects.
node
contains moved node.
parent
contains new parent of the moved node.
{node: <TreeModel>{...}, parent: <TreeModel>{...}}
NodeMovedEvent
inherits its properties from NodeDestructiveEvent
.
You can subscribe to NodeRemovedEvent
by attaching listener to (nodeRemoved)
attribute
<tree
[tree]="tree"
(nodeRemoved)="handleRemoved($event)">
</tree>
NodeRemovedEvent
has two properties node
and parent
both of which contain TreeModel
objects.
node
contains removed node.
parent
contains parent of the removed node.
{node: <TreeModel>{...}, parent: <TreeModel>{...}}
NodeRemovedEvent
inherits its properties from NodeDestructiveEvent
.
You can subscribe to NodeCreatedEvent
by attaching listener to (nodeCreated)
attribute
<tree
[tree]="tree"
(nodeCreated)="handleCreated($event)">
</tree>
NodeCreatedEvent
has two properties node
and parent
both of which contain TreeModel
objects.
node
contains created node.
parent
contains parent of the newly created node.
{node: <TreeModel>{...}, parent: <TreeModel>{...}}
NodeCreatedEvent
inherits its properties from NodeDestructiveEvent
.
You can subscribe to NodeRenamedEvent
by attaching listener to (nodeRenamed)
attribute
<tree
[tree]="tree"
(nodeRenamed)="handleRenamed($event)">
</tree>
NodeRenamedEvent
has four properties:
node
contains node that was renamed (implementsTreeModel
).parent
contains parent (implementsTreeModel
) for the renamed node.oldValue
contains value node used to have (it might bestring
orRenamableNode
)newValue
contains new value of the node (it might bestring
orRenamableNode
)
{
node: <TreeModel>{...},
parent: <TreeModel>{...},
oldValue: <string|RenamableNode>{...},
newValue: <string|RenamableNode>{...}
}
NodeRenamedEvent
inherits its node
and parent
properties from NodeDestructiveEvent
.
Currently I feel really bad because of two things:
- ng2-tree doesn't have tests (yet), so I wouldn't recommend you to use this in a production environment
- ng2-tree doesn't have proper mechanism for customizing its look
I really want to deminish all the Bad parts and extend ng2-tree with a new stuff
I am very appreciate for your ideas, proposals and found bugs which you can leave in github issues. Thanks in advance!
P.S. If you find it hard going through documentation, please, let me know which parts of it was difficult to grasp and I will improve them.