Question

I’m building a browser based app in Python with the help of Jinja2 and would like to add a dialog box to each item in a list of files. For example, my Python/Jinja2 generates the following HTML:

<div id="dialog">Unique data goes here.</div>
...
<li class="ui-widget-content">something.pdf</li> 
<li class="ui-widget-content">something else.zip</li> 
<li class="ui-widget-content">something else(1).zip</li>
...

I would like each <li> to be a call-out to the Javascript that shows the dialog box, and for each dialog box to contain unique information related to the file in the list. This list is ever-changing too. Here is the JS code I have so far, but this only brings up the first item in the list for each <li> tag:

$.fx.speeds._default = 1000;
$(function() {
    $( "#dialog" ).dialog({
        autoOpen: false,
        show: "slide",
        hide: "fade"
    });
});
$(document).ready(function(){
  $("#selectable").children("li").each(function() {
      $(this).mouseover(function(){
          $(this).css("background-color","#FECA40");
      });
      $(this).mouseout(function(){
          $(this).css("background-color","white");
      });
      $(this).click(function(){
          $("#dialog").dialog( "open" );
          return false;
    });
  });
});

I am very new to Javascript and am completely lost on this one. The only way I can think to accomplish this is to assign a unique id to each <div> and then create a corresponding function for each id. Since the list is upwards of 300 files, that doesn’t seem too smart of an idea. What is the best way to give each <li> tag it’s own unique dialog box? Thanks!

Answer 1

Does this work?

$.fx.speeds._default = 1000;
$(function() {
    $( "#dialog" ).dialog({
        autoOpen: false,
        show: "slide",
        hide: "fade"
    });
});
$(document).ready(function(){
  $("#selectable").children("li").each(function() {
      $(this).mouseover(function(){
          $(this).css("background-color","#FECA40");
      });
      $(this).mouseout(function(){
          $(this).css("background-color","white");
      });
      $(this).click(function(){
          // if no dialog has been created for this li
          if (!$(this).data('dialog')) {
              // initialize one
              $(this).data('dialog', 
                  $('<div />')
                      //.text($(this).text()) // set the text of the dialog
                      .load('someurl.php?file=' + encodeURIComponent($(this).text())) // set content by ajax request
                      .dialog({autoOpen: false})
              );
          }
          var dlg = $(this).data('dialog');
          dlg.dialog( "open" );
          return false;
    });
  });
});