Elements

Interface

The Lua interface for Rocket elements closely resembles Gecko's HTML DOM element interface, similarly to the C++ element interface.

Properties

Rocket property	Brief description	Equivalent DOM property
absolute_left	The distance from the context's left edge and the element's left border.
absolute_top	The distance from the context's top edge and the element's top border.
attributes	All attributes associated with an element.	attributes
child_nodes	All child nodes of an element.	childNodes
class_name	Gets/sets the class of the element.	className
client_height	The inner height of an element.	clientHeight
client_left	The width of the left border of an element.	clientLeft
client_top	The width of the top border of an element.	clientTop
client_width	The inner width of an element.	clientWidth
first_child	The first direct child node of an element.	firstChild
id	Gets/sets the id of the element.	id
inner_rml	Gets/sets the markup and content of the element.	innerHTML
last_child	The last direct child node of an element.	lastChild
next_sibling	The node immediately following the given one in the tree.	nextSibling
offset_height	The height of an element, relative to the layout.	offsetHeight
offset_left	The distance from this element's left border to its offset parent's left border.	offsetLeft
offset_parent	The element from which all offset calculations are currently computed.	offsetParent
offset_top	The distance from this element's top border to its offset parent's top border.	offsetTop
offset_width	The width of an element, relative to the layout.	offsetWidth
owner_document	The document that this node is in.	ownerDocument
parent_node	The parent element of this node.	parentNode
previous_sibling	The node immediately preceding the given one in the tree.	previousSibling
scroll_height	The scroll view height of an element.	scrollHeight
scroll_left	Gets/sets the left scroll offset of an element.	scrollLeft
scroll_top	Gets/sets the top scroll offset of an element.	scrollTop
scroll_width	The scroll view width of an element.	scrollWidth
style	An object representing the declarations of an element's style attributes.	style
tag_name	The name of the tag for the given element.	tagName

Table returning properties

There are three properties of Elements that return tables of data. They are child_nodes, attributes, and style. They are implemented in C++ as proxy tables with regards to their Lua interface.

The child_nodes property is accessed as an array; it is indexed numerically, from the front or back.

child_nodes is an array of element types. The array only includes visible elements; Lua has no way of querying hidden elements. The following example iterates over all of an element's children, printing their tag names, ids and classes:

for key,child in ipairs(element.child_nodes) do
    local address = child.tag_name

    if child.id != "" then
        address .. "#" .. child.id
    end

    --class_name is a space-separated list of class names. We want to turn that in to a comma-separated list
    --and then compile that in to a table. Think of it as a string.split function (Lua doesn't have one)
    local classes = loadstring("return {"..child.class_name:gsub(" ",",").."}")()
    for notused,class in pairs(classes) do
        address .. "." .. class
    end

    print address
end

attributes is a table of attribute types, with a string key and a variant value. The following example iterates over an element's attributes, printing their names and values:

for name,attribute in pairs(element.attributes) do
    print key .. ": " .. attribute
end

The style property operates identically to its counterpart in Javascript. Properties are accessed as members of the style property by name and can be read or written to. The value of a property is always an unparsed string in this context; ie, "200px", "center", "rgb(255,0,0)", etc.

The following example demonstrates uses of the style property:

element.style.width = "150px";
if element.style.float != "none":
	element.style.clear = "left";

Methods

Rocket methods	Brief description	Equivalent DOM method
AddEventListener()	Register an event handler to a specific event type on the element.	addEventListener()
AppendChild()	Insert a node as the last child node of this element.	appendChild()
Blur()	Removes keyboard focus from the current element.	blur()
Click()	Simulates a click on the current element.	click()
DispatchEvent()	Dispatch an event to this node in the DOM.	dispatchEvent()
Focus()	Gives keyboard focus to the current element.	focus()
GetAttribute()	Retrieve the value of the named attribute from the current node.	getAttribute()
GetElementById()	Returns an object reference to the identified element.	getElementById()
GetElementsByTagName()	Retrieve a set of all descendant elements, of a particular tag name, from the current element.	getElementsByTagName()
HasAttribute()	Check if the element has the specified attribute, or not.	hasAttribute()
HasChildNodes()	Check if the element has any child nodes, or not.	hasChildNodes()
InsertBefore()	Inserts the first node before the second, child, node in the DOM.	insertBefore()
RemoveAttribute()	Remove the named attribute from the current node.	removeAttribute()
RemoveChild()	Removes a child node from the current element.	removeChild()
ReplaceChild()	Replaces one child node in the current element with another.	replaceChild()
ScrollIntoView()	Scrolls the page until the element gets into the view.	scrollIntoView()
SetAttribute()	Set the value of the named attribute from the current node.	setAttribute()

Dispatching events

Events can be generated on an element from within Lua with the DispatchEvent() function. When calling this function, the parameters are given as a Lua table; Rocket will convert this into a Rocket dictionary when the C++ event is created.

element.DispatchEvent("open", {"object" = "trapdoor", "priority" = 11}, false)

Parameter keys must be strings, and values must be strings, integers, floating-point, boolean, or Lua userdata.

Creating elements

Elements can be created dynamically in Lua using the document's CreateElement() or CreateTextNode() method. The following code sample uses CreateElement() to dynamically create a form control.

input_element = document.CreateElement("input")
input_element.SetAttribute("type", "radio")
input_element.SetAttribute("name", "graphics")
input_element.SetAttribute("value", "ok")
document.AppendChild(input_element)

text_element = document.CreateTextNode("OK")
document.AppendChild(text_element)