Question

I’ve been asked to use the TinyMCE editor in a project. On the download page, there’s a main package, and then a jQuery package

This package contains special jQuery build of TinyMCE and a jQuery integration plugin.
tinymce_3_3_7_jquery.zip

What is the jQuery build of TinyMCE? Is it just TinyMCE with the same features built on top of jQuery? Is it standard TinyMCE but with some kind add-on that makes manipulating TinyMCE with jQuery easier? Something else? A quick internet search told me “it’s tiny MCE with jQuery functionality!”, but I’m curious what the means.

Answer 1

The jquery plugin allows you to use jquery syntax to attach TinyMCE to a textarea. Here is a code sample that illustrates how to convert a textarea control to a wysiwyg editor, at the same time turning on several TinyMCE options.

<!-- Load jQuery -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
        google.load("jquery", "1.3");
</script>

<!-- Load jQuery build -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="<your installation path>/tiny_mce/tiny_mce.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
tinyMCE.init({
        // General options
        mode : "textareas",
        theme : "advanced",
        plugins : "pagebreak,style,layer,table,save,advhr,advimage,advlink,emotions,iespell,inlinepopups,insertdatetime,preview,media,searchreplace,print,contextmenu,paste,directionality,fullscreen,noneditable,visualchars,nonbreaking,xhtmlxtras,template",

        // Theme options
        theme_advanced_buttons1 : "save,newdocument,|,bold,italic,underline,strikethrough,|,justifyleft,justifycenter,justifyright,justifyfull,|,styleselect,formatselect,fontselect,fontsizeselect",
        theme_advanced_buttons2 : "cut,copy,paste,pastetext,pasteword,|,search,replace,|,bullist,numlist,|,outdent,indent,blockquote,|,undo,redo,|,link,unlink,anchor,image,cleanup,help,code,|,insertdate,inserttime,preview,|,forecolor,backcolor",
        theme_advanced_buttons3 : "tablecontrols,|,hr,removeformat,visualaid,|,sub,sup,|,charmap,emotions,iespell,media,advhr,|,print,|,ltr,rtl,|,fullscreen",
        theme_advanced_buttons4 : "insertlayer,moveforward,movebackward,absolute,|,styleprops,|,cite,abbr,acronym,del,ins,attribs,|,visualchars,nonbreaking,template,pagebreak",
        theme_advanced_toolbar_location : "top",
        theme_advanced_toolbar_align : "left",
        theme_advanced_statusbar_location : "bottom",
        theme_advanced_resizing : true,

        // Example content CSS (should be your site CSS)
        content_css : "css/example.css",

        // Drop lists for link/image/media/template dialogs
        template_external_list_url : "js/template_list.js",
        external_link_list_url : "js/link_list.js",
        external_image_list_url : "js/image_list.js",
        media_external_list_url : "js/media_list.js",

        // Replace values for the template plugin
        template_replace_values : {
                username : "Some User",
                staffid : "991234"
        }
});
</script>

<form method="post" action="somepage">
        <textarea name="content" style="width:100%">
        </textarea>
</form>

It’s also really simple to retrieve or update the wysiwyg html using the jQuery plugin.

// Will change the contents of an textarea with the ID "someeditor"
$('#someeditor').html('Some contents...');

// Will change the contents all text areas with the class tinymce
$('textarea.tinymce').html('Some contents...');

// Gets the contents from a specific editor
alert($('#someeditor').html());