Draggables and Resizables in SVG

Question

I want to make an svg element (path, rect, or circle) be able to be draggable and give it resize handles.

But unlike HTML DOM, not all elements have an upper left hand corner x,y coordinate and a width and height for a box surrounding the content. This makes it inconvenient to make a generic resize or drag procedure.

Is it a good idea to have each path or circle be drawn inside its own svg object to give me a box to play with?

How is draggable/resizable typically implemented in SVG?

Answer 1

Note: For both drag and resize, you'll have to make separate cases for certain different types of elements. Take a look in the example I provide later on that handles the dragging of both ellipses and rectangles in the same set of functions.

---

To make an element dragable you use:

element.drag(move, start, up);

The three arguments are references to the functions that handle moving (dragging), starting (mouse down), and the stopping (mouseup).

For example to make a draggable circle (from the documentation):

window.onload = function() {
var R = Raphael("canvas", 500, 500);    
var c = R.circle(100, 100, 50).attr({
    fill: "hsb(.8, 1, 1)",
    stroke: "none",
    opacity: .5
});
var start = function () {
    // storing original coordinates
    this.ox = this.attr("cx");
    this.oy = this.attr("cy");
    this.attr({opacity: 1});
},
move = function (dx, dy) {
    // move will be called with dx and dy
    this.attr({cx: this.ox + dx, cy: this.oy + dy});
},
up = function () {
    // restoring state
    this.attr({opacity: .5});
};
c.drag(move, start, up);    
};​

jsFiddle example

In the above example, the ox and oy properties are tacked on to the element to keep track of its location, and these properties in conjunction with dx and dy are used to change the location of the element as it's being dragged.

A more complicated drag and drop to answer this question.

To make an object resizeable, you would simply create a second set of drag and drop methods for the resizer and just adjust the target elements height and width based on dragging the resizer.

Here's a full of one drag and drop and resizeable box I wrote up:

jsFiddle example of drag and drop and resizeable box

window.onload = function() {
var R = Raphael("canvas", 500, 500),
    c = R.rect(100, 100, 100, 100).attr({
            fill: "hsb(.8, 1, 1)",
            stroke: "none",
            opacity: .5,
            cursor: "move"
        }),
    s = R.rect(180, 180, 20, 20).attr({
            fill: "hsb(.8, .5, .5)",
            stroke: "none",
            opacity: .5
        }),
    // start, move, and up are the drag functions
    start = function () {
        // storing original coordinates
        this.ox = this.attr("x");
        this.oy = this.attr("y");
        this.attr({opacity: 1});

        this.sizer.ox = this.sizer.attr("x");
        this.sizer.oy = this.sizer.attr("y");
        this.sizer.attr({opacity: 1});
    },
    move = function (dx, dy) {
        // move will be called with dx and dy
        this.attr({x: this.ox + dx, y: this.oy + dy});
        this.sizer.attr({x: this.sizer.ox + dx, y: this.sizer.oy + dy});        
    },
    up = function () {
        // restoring state
        this.attr({opacity: .5});
        this.sizer.attr({opacity: .5});        
    },
    rstart = function () {
        // storing original coordinates
        this.ox = this.attr("x");
        this.oy = this.attr("y");

        this.box.ow = this.box.attr("width");
        this.box.oh = this.box.attr("height");        
    },
    rmove = function (dx, dy) {
        // move will be called with dx and dy
        this.attr({x: this.ox + dx, y: this.oy + dy});
        this.box.attr({width: this.box.ow + dx, height: this.box.oh + dy});
    };   
    // rstart and rmove are the resize functions;
    c.drag(move, start, up);
    c.sizer = s;
    s.drag(rmove, rstart);
    s.box = c;
};​

The included event handlers (you can use more of course in conjunction with .node()) and the drag and drop description is at the bottom of the page in the documentation.

You would simply make one Raphael canvas, and then each item would be a different element. Just assign them to variables so you can handle them, like in the example above ( c was used to refer to the created circle element ).