Question

In jQuery, I can very easily get the current computed height for an element that includes padding, border, and optionally margin by using outerHeight()…

// returns height of element + border + padding + margin
$('.my-element').outerHeight(true);

How would I do this in YUI? I’m currently using version 2.8.1.

Similar to this question, I can always do getComputedStyle() for height, border, padding, and margin, but that is a lot of manual labor which includes parsing the return values and grabbing the correct values that are needed and doing the math myself.

Isn’t there some equivalent function to jQuery’s outerHeight() in YUI that does all of this for me?

Solution

I ended up writing my own solution since I couldn’t find a jQuery outerheight() equivalent. I’ve posted the solution as an answer here.

Answer 1

I ended up writing my own little utility function for this:

/**
 * Calculates the outer height for the given DOM element, including the 
 * contributions of padding, border, and margin.
 * 
 * @param el - the element of which to calculate the outer height
 */
function calculateElementOuterHeight(el) {

  var height = 0;
  var attributeHeight = 0;
  var attributes = [
      'height', 
      'border-top-width', 
      'border-bottom-width', 
      'padding-top', 
      'padding-bottom', 
      'margin-top', 
      'margin-bottom'
  ];

  for (var i = 0; i < attributes.length; i++) {

    // for most browsers, getStyle() will get us a value for the attribute 
    // that is parse-able into a number
    attributeHeight = parseInt(YAHOO.util.Dom.getStyle(el, attributes[i]), 10);

    // if the browser returns something that is not parse-able, like "auto", 
    // try getComputedStyle(); should get us what we need
    if (isNaN(attributeHeight)) {
      attributeHeight = parseInt(YAHOO.util.Dom.getComputedStyle(el, attributes[i]), 10);
    }

    // if we have an actual numeric value now, add it to the height, 
    // otherwise ignore it
    if (!isNaN(attributeHeight)) {
      height += attributeHeight;
    }
  }

  return isNaN(height) ? 0 : height;
}

This seems to work across all modern browsers. I’ve tested it in Chrome, Firefox (idk about 3.6, but the latest version works), Safari, Opera, & IE 7,8,9. Let me know what you guys think!