Question

I bumped into the following problem, hope someone will know how to help me:

I work with the JavaScript library Raphael. Now, what I want to do is, when I have many Raphael SVG elements, to simply select more elements with “rectangle selection”, i.e. by dragging the mouse starting from the graph’s background to create a selection rectangle (I hope I was clear enough), and move the elements which are in this rectangle.

For now, I’ve found something like this (someone posted it from a previous question of mine):

var paper = Raphael(0, 0, '100%', '100%');

var circle = paper.circle(75, 75, 50);
var rect = paper.rect(150, 150, 50, 50);

var set = paper.set();

set.push(circle, rect);
set.attr({
    fill: 'red',
    stroke: 0
});

var ox = 0;
var oy = 0;
var dragging = false;

set.mousedown(function(event) {
    ox = event.screenX;
    oy = event.screenY;
    set.attr({
        opacity: .5
    });
    dragging = true;
});

set.mousemove(function(event) {
    if (dragging) {
        set.translate(event.screenX - ox, event.screenY - oy);
        ox = event.screenX;
        oy = event.screenY;
    }
});

set.mouseup(function(event) {
    dragging = false;
    set.attr({
        opacity: 1
    });
});

This code can be executed on jsfiddle. But, as you can see, this selects ALL the elements, by simply adding them to a Raphael set.

Now, I think that my problem will be solved by:

1. Making a rectangle selection
2. Adding the nodes which are in the rectangle to a Raphael set
3. Move only the selected items (i.e. move only the items which are in the Raphael set with set.mousemove)

My problem for now would be the first two issues.

Any ideas how to do this?

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Fun problem. You can do this by placing a rectangular “mat” the size of the canvas behind all of your other objects and attaching a drag event to it for selecting other elements. (Note this solution uses the newer version of Raphael, 2.1.0:

var paper = Raphael(0, 0, '100%', '100%');

//make an object in the background on which to attach drag events
var mat = paper.rect(0, 0, paper.width, paper.height).attr("fill", "#FFF");

var circle = paper.circle(75, 75, 50);
var rect = paper.rect(150, 150, 50, 50);
var set = paper.set();

set.push(circle, rect);
set.attr({
    fill: 'red',
    stroke: 0
});
//the box we're going to draw to track the selection
var box;
//set that will receive the selected items
var selections = paper.set();

Now, we add a drag event — similar to the mouseover events but with three functions (see documentation), and draw a box to track the selection space:

//DRAG FUNCTIONS
//when mouse goes down over background, start drawing selection box
function dragstart (x, y, event) {
    box = paper.rect(x, y, 0, 0).attr("stroke", "#9999FF");    
}

// When mouse moves during drag, adjust box.
// If the drag is to the left or above original point,
// you have to translate the whole box and invert the dx 
// or dy values since .rect() doesn't take negative width or height
function dragmove (dx, dy, x, y, event) {
    var xoffset = 0,
        yoffset = 0;
    if (dx < 0) {
        xoffset = dx;
        dx = -1 * dx;
    }
    if (dy < 0) {
        yoffset = dy;
        dy = -1 * dy;
    }
    box.transform("T" + xoffset + "," + yoffset);
    box.attr("width", dx);    
    box.attr("height", dy);    
}

function dragend (event) {
    //get the bounds of the selections
    var bounds = box.getBBox();
    box.remove();
    reset();
    console.log(bounds);
    for (var c in set.items) {
        // Here, we want to get the x,y vales of each object
        // regardless of what sort of shape it is.
        // But rect uses rx and ry, circle uses cx and cy, etc
        // So we'll see if the bounding boxes intercept instead

        var mybounds = set[c].getBBox();
        //do bounding boxes overlap?
        //is one of this object's x extremes between the selection's xe xtremes?
        if (mybounds.x >= bounds.x && mybounds.x <= bounds.x2 || mybounds.x2 >= bounds.x && mybounds.x2 <= bounds.x2) {
            //same for y
            if (mybounds.y >= bounds.y && mybounds.y <= bounds.y2 || mybounds.y2 >= bounds.y && mybounds.y2 <= bounds.y2) {
                selections.push(set[c]);       
            }
        }
        selections.attr("opacity", 0.5);
    }
}

function reset () {
    //empty selections and reset opacity;
    selections = paper.set();
    set.attr("opacity", 1);    
}

mat.drag(dragmove, dragstart, dragend);
mat.click(function(e) {
   reset(); 
});

Just like that, you have a new set (selections) that contains every object that was selected by the mouse drag. You can then apply your mouseover events from the original to that set.

Note that this will select circle objects if you nick the corner of their bounding box with your selection box, even if it doesn’t overlap with the area of the circle. You could make a special case for circles if this is a problem.

jsFiddle