Question

How can I simulate user-selection of some style from the styles-box, through JS? I want to put some shortcut buttons that assign some of the popular styles with one click.

EDIT:

• I don’t care if it’ll be in-editor button or outer button.
• I don’t want css-style assignment; I want CKEditor-style assignment (those of the styles-box).

Answer 1

I haven’t used CKEditor, but, I saw your question and thought “That would be fun to figure out.” Well, here is what I figured out:

(yes, I found terrible documentation, but, that’s not the point…I will give them props for commenting their code, though.)

///
// function to add buttons that trigger styles to be applied.
//
// editor - CKEDITOR - instance of editor you want command attached to.
// buttonName - String - name of the button
// buttonLabel - String - humane readable name of the button
// commandName - String - name of command, the way to call this command from CKEDITOR.execCommand()
// styleDefinition - StyleDefinition - obj defining the style you would like to apply when this command is called.
///

var addButtonCommand = function( editor, buttonName, buttonLabel, commandName, styleDefiniton )
{
    var style = new CKEDITOR.style( styleDefiniton );
    editor.attachStyleStateChange( style, function( state )
        {
            !editor.readOnly && editor.getCommand( commandName ).setState( state );
        });
    editor.addCommand( commandName, new CKEDITOR.styleCommand( style ) );
    editor.ui.addButton( buttonName,
        {
            label : buttonLabel,

            command : commandName
            //adding an icon here should display the button on the toolbar.
            //icon : "path to img",
        });
};

//Get the editor instance you want to use.  Normally the same as the ID of the textarea CKEditor binds to.
var editor1 = CKEDITOR.instances.editor1;

//If you look at ckeditor/_source/plugins/styles/default.js you will see that this selects the first element.  That list is read into the array 'default'.
var blueTitleStyle = CKEDITOR.stylesSet.registered.default[0];

//Or, you can define the style like this: See http://dev.ckeditor.com/wiki/Components/Styles for more info on style definitions.
var blueTitleStyle = { 
    name : 'Blue Title',
    element : 'h3',
    styles : { 'color' : 'Blue' }
};

addButtonCommand(editor1, 'BlueTitle', 'BlueTitle', 'bluetitle', blueTitleStyle);

Here is a Javascript function to aid your click events:

//function used to execute the command.  Only used for calling the command when not calling from a button. (Like an A with an onClick bound to it.)
    //pulled this function right out of the api.html example in the ckeditor/_samples dir.
    function ExecuteCommand( commandName )
    {
        // Get the editor instance that we want to interact with.
        var oEditor = CKEDITOR.instances.editor1;

        // Check the active editing mode.
        if ( oEditor.mode == 'wysiwyg' )
        {
            // Execute the command.
            // http://docs.cksource.com/ckeditor_api/symbols/CKEDITOR.editor.html#execCommand
            oEditor.execCommand( commandName );
        }
        else
        {
            alert( 'You must be in WYSIWYG mode!' );
        }
    }

Now, you can create a link like this:

<a href='#' class='setBlueTitle'>Set Blue Title</a>

and use a bit of jQuery to spice it up:

 <script type="text/javascript">
            $(document).ready(function(){
                $(".setBlueTitle").onClick(function(e){
                    //stops the click from changing the page and whatever other default action would happen.
                    e.preventDefault();

                    ExecuteCommand('bluetitle');
                });
            });
        </script>

I am not 100% sure about the button icon part. I didn’t have an icon to try it with. But, according to a few posts, it should work fine. Regardless, the jQuery click binding works.

That should be pretty much it! I had to do quite a bit of digging around to figure this out, but it certainly is satisfying to see it work!