The goal of this blog entry is
to explain how you can create a simple master/detail view by using the WinJS ListView and Template controls. In particular, I explain how you can use a ListView control
to display a list of movies and how you can use a Template control
to display the details of the selected movie.
Creating a master/detail view requires completing the following four steps:
Create the data source – The data source contains the list of movies.
Declare the ListView control – The ListView control displays the entire list of movies. It is the master part of the master/detail view.
Declare the Details Template control – The Details Template control displays the details for the selected movie. It is the details part of the master/detail view.
Handle the selectionchanged event – You handle the selectionchanged event
to display the details for a movie when a new movie is selected.
Creating the Data Source
There is nothing special about our data source. We initialize a WinJS.Binding.List object
to represent a list of movies:
(function () {
"use strict";
var movies = new WinJS.Binding.List([
{ title: "Star Wars", director: "Lucas"},
{ title: "Shrek", director: "Adamson" },
{ title: "Star Trek", director: "Abrams" },
{ title: "Spiderman", director: "Raimi" },
{ title: "Memento", director: "Nolan" },
{ title: "Minority Report", director: "Spielberg" }
]);
// Expose the data source
WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", {
movies: movies
});
})();
The data source is exposed
to the rest of our application with the name ListViewDemos.movies.
Declaring the ListView Control
The ListView control is declared with the following markup:
<div id="movieList"
data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView"
data-win-options="{
itemDataSource: ListViewDemos.movies.dataSource,
itemTemplate: select('#masterItemTemplate'),
tapBehavior: 'directSelect',
selectionMode: 'single',
layout: { type: WinJS.UI.ListLayout }
}">
</div>
The data-win-options attribute is used
to set the following properties of the ListView control:
itemDataSource – The ListView is bound
to the list of movies which we created in the previous section. Notice that the ListView is bound
to ListViewDemos.movies.dataSource and not just ListViewDemos.movies.
itemTemplate – The item template contains the template used for rendering each item in the ListView. The markup for this template is included below.
tabBehavior – This enumeration determines what happens when you tap or click on an item in the ListView. The possible values are directSelect, toggleSelect, invokeOnly, none. Because we want
to handle the selectionchanged event, we set tapBehavior
to the value directSelect.
selectionMode – This enumeration determines whether you can select multiple items or only a single item. The possible values are none, single, multi. In the code above, this property is set
to the value single.
layout – You can use ListLayout or GridLayout with a ListView. If you want
to display a vertical ListView, then you should select ListLayout.
You must associate a ListView with an item template if you want
to render anything interesting. The ListView above is associated with an item template named #masterItemTemplate. Here’s the markup for the masterItemTemplate:
<div id="masterItemTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template">
<div class="movie">
<span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span>
</div>
</div>
This template simply renders the title of each movie.
Declaring the Details Template Control
The details part of the master/detail view is created with the help of a Template control. Here’s the markup used
to declare the Details Template control:
<div id="detailsTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template">
<div>
<div>
Title:
<span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span>
</div>
<div>
Director:
<span data-win-bind="innerText:director"></span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
The Details Template control displays the movie title and director.
Handling the selectionchanged Event
The ListView control can raise two types of events: the iteminvoked and selectionchanged events. The iteminvoked event is raised when you click on a ListView item. The selectionchanged event is raised when one or more ListView items are selected.
When you set the tapBehavior property of the ListView control
to the value “directSelect” then tapping or clicking a list item raised both the iteminvoked and selectionchanged event. Tapping a list item causes the item
to be selected and the item appears with a checkmark.
In our code, we handle the selectionchanged event
to update the movie details Template when you select a new movie.
Here’s the code from the default.js file used
to handle the selectionchanged event:
var movieList = document.getElementById("movieList");
var detailsTemplate = document.getElementById("detailsTemplate");
var movieDetails = document.getElementById("movieDetails");
// Setup selectionchanged handler
movieList.winControl.addEventListener("selectionchanged", function (evt) {
if (movieList.winControl.selection.count() > 0) {
movieList.winControl.selection.getItems().then(function (items) {
// Clear the template container
movieDetails.innerHTML = "";
// Render the template
detailsTemplate.winControl.render(items[0].data, movieDetails);
});
}
});
The code above sets up an event handler (listener) for the selectionchanged event. The event handler first verifies that an item has been selected in the ListView (selection.count() > 0). Next, the details for the movie are rendered using the movie details Template (we created this Template in the previous section).
The Complete Code
For the sake of completeness, I’ve included the complete code for the master/detail view below. I’ve included both the default.html, default.js, and movies.js files.
Here is the final code for the default.html file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>ListViewMasterDetail</title>
<!-- WinJS references -->
<link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet">
<script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script>
<script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script>
<!-- ListViewMasterDetail references -->
<link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet">
<script src="/js/default.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/movies.js"></script>
<style type="text/css">
body {
font-size: xx-large;
}
.movie {
padding: 5px;
}
#masterDetail {
display: -ms-box;
}
#movieList {
width: 300px;
margin: 20px;
}
#movieDetails {
margin: 20px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<!-- Templates -->
<div id="masterItemTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template">
<div class="movie">
<span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span>
</div>
</div>
<div id="detailsTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template">
<div>
<div>
Title:
<span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span>
</div>
<div>
Director:
<span data-win-bind="innerText:director"></span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Master/Detail -->
<div id="masterDetail">
<!-- Master -->
<div id="movieList"
data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView"
data-win-options="{
itemDataSource: ListViewDemos.movies.dataSource,
itemTemplate: select('#masterItemTemplate'),
tapBehavior: 'directSelect',
selectionMode: 'single',
layout: { type: WinJS.UI.ListLayout }
}">
</div>
<!-- Detail -->
<div id="movieDetails"></div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Here is the default.js file:
(function () {
"use strict";
var app = WinJS.Application;
app.onactivated = function (eventObject) {
if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) {
WinJS.UI.processAll();
var movieList = document.getElementById("movieList");
var detailsTemplate = document.getElementById("detailsTemplate");
var movieDetails = document.getElementById("movieDetails");
// Setup selectionchanged handler
movieList.winControl.addEventListener("selectionchanged", function (evt) {
if (movieList.winControl.selection.count() > 0) {
movieList.winControl.selection.getItems().then(function (items) {
// Clear the template container
movieDetails.innerHTML = "";
// Render the template
detailsTemplate.winControl.render(items[0].data, movieDetails);
});
}
});
}
};
app.start();
})();
Here is the movies.js file:
(function () {
"use strict";
var movies = new WinJS.Binding.List([
{ title: "Star Wars", director: "Lucas"},
{ title: "Shrek", director: "Adamson" },
{ title: "Star Trek", director: "Abrams" },
{ title: "Spiderman", director: "Raimi" },
{ title: "Memento", director: "Nolan" },
{ title: "Minority Report", director: "Spielberg" }
]);
// Expose the data source
WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", {
movies: movies
});
})();
Summary
The purpose of this blog entry was
to describe how
to create a simple master/detail view by taking advantage of the WinJS ListView control. We handled the selectionchanged event of the ListView control
to display movie details when you select a movie in the ListView.
