jsPlumb Community edition provides a means for a developer to visually connect elements on their web pages, using SVG.
jsPlumb has no external dependencies.
The 1.7.x line of releases were the last ones to support IE8. From version 2.0.0, the Community edition works only in modern browsers that support SVG.
It is a good idea to read this entire page. There are a few things you need to know about integrating jsPlumb with your UI.
jsPlumb 1.7.x runs on everything from IE6 up. jsPlumb 2.x runs on everything from IE9 up.
If you're serving your pages with content type text/html, as most people are, then you should use this doctype:
<!doctype html>
This gives you Standards mode in all browsers and access to HTML5.
No required imports.
<script src="PATH_TO/jsplumb.min.js "></script>
You should not start making calls to jsPlumb until the DOM has been initialized - perhaps no surprises there. To handle
this, you should bind to the ready event on jsPlumb (or the instance of jsPlumb you are working with):
jsPlumb.bind("ready", function() {
...
// your jsPlumb related init code goes here
...
});
There's a helper method that can save you a few precious characters:
jsPlumb.ready(function() {
...
// your jsPlumb related init code goes here
...
});
If you bind to the ready event after jsPlumb has already been initialized, your callback will be executed immediately.
jsPlumb is registered on the browser's window by default, providing one static instance for the whole page to use. You
can also instantiate independent instances of jsPlumb, using the getInstance method, for example:
var firstInstance = jsPlumb.getInstance();
The variable firstInstance can now be treated exactly as you would treat the jsPlumb variable - you can set defaults,
call the connect method, whatever:
firstInstance.importDefaults({
Connector : [ "Bezier", { curviness: 150 } ],
Anchors : [ "TopCenter", "BottomCenter" ]
});
firstInstance.connect({
source:"element1",
target:"element2",
scope:"someScope"
});
getInstance optionally takes an object that provides the defaults:
var secondInstance = jsPlumb.getInstance({
PaintStyle:{
strokeWidth:6,
stroke:"#567567",
outlineStroke:"black",
outlineWidth:1
},
Connector:[ "Bezier", { curviness: 30 } ],
Endpoint:[ "Dot", { radius:5 } ],
EndpointStyle : { fill: "#567567" },
Anchor : [ 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1 ]
});
secondInstance.connect({
source:"element4",
target:"element3",
scope:"someScope"
});
It is recommended to use separate instances of jsPlumb wherever possible.
jsPlumb uses the id attribute of any element with which it interacts. If id is not set, jsPlumb will create an id
for the element. It is recommended that you set appropriate ids for the elements in your UI yourself.
Because of the fact that jsPlumb uses element ids, you need to tell jsPlumb if an element id changes. There are two methods to help you do this:
jsPlumb.setId(el, newId) Use this if you want jsPlumb to take care of changing the id in the DOM. It will do so,
and then update its references accordingly.
jsPlumb.setIdChanged(oldId, newId) Use this if you have already changed the element's ID, and you just want
jsPlumb to update its references.
Almost every method in jsPlumb that operates on elements supports multiple formats for specifying the element(s) on which to operate.
In the jsPlumb documentation you will see references to the concept of a selector. This is a list of elements that match
some CSS spec. In modern browsers you can get one of these via a call like:
someElement.querySelectorAll('.someSelector')
The native element that querySelectorAll returns is a NodeList.
Although jsPlumb has no dependency on jQuery, it also supports jQuery selectors as arguments for elements (vanilla jsPlumb
because jQuery's selector object is list-like, ie. it has a length property and indexed accessors). So this will
also work, if you happen to be using jQuery in your page:
$(someElement).find(".someSelector")
Passing a single string as argument will cause jsPlumb to treat that string as an element id.
You can pass DOM elements as arguments. This will probably not surprise you.
You can also pass an array of any or all of the types we just listed. The contents of the array can be mixed - they do not have to be all one type.
You need to pay attention to the z-indices of the various parts of your UI when using jsPlumb, in particular to ensure that the elements that jsPlumb adds to the DOM do not overlay other parts of the interface.
jsPlumb adds an element to the DOM for each Endpoint, Connector and Overlay. So for a Connection having visible Endpoints at each end and a label in the middle, jsPlumb adds four elements to the DOM.
To help you organise z-indices correctly, jsPlumb adds a CSS class to each type of element it adds. They are as follows:
| Component | Class |
| Endpoint | jtk-endpoint |
| Connector | jtk-connector |
| Overlay | jtk-overlay |
In addition, whenever the mouse is hovering over an Endpoint or Connection, that component is assigned the class jtk-hover.
For more information about styling jsPlumb with CSS, see this page.
It's important to understand where in the DOM jsPlumb will add any elements it creates. If you want a TL;DR version, then it boils down to this:
offsetParent of the first
element on which you call addEndpoint, makeSource or makeTarget, or the offsetParent of the source element in
the first connect call - whichever happens first.Let's discuss this in more detail.
Early versions of jsPlumb added everything to the body element. This has the advantage of being the most flexible arrangement in terms of supporting which elements can be connected, but in certain use cases produced unexpected results.
Consider the arrangement where you have some connected elements in a tab: you would expect jsPlumb to add elements inside the tab, so that when the user switches tabs and the current one is hidden, all the jsPlumb stuff is hidden too. But when the elements are on the body, this does not happen!
It is also quite common for jsPlumb to be used in a page in which the diagram is contained within some element that should show scrollbars when its content overflows. Appending elements to the document body prevents this from occurring automatically.
You can - and should - instruct jsPlumb to use some element as the parent of everything jsPlumb adds to the UI
through usage of the setContainer method in jsPlumb, or by providing the Container in the parameters to a jsPlumb.getInstance
call.
Important This is a change from versions of jsPlumb prior to 1.6.2. In versions prior to 1.6.2 you could assign the
Container directly via the jsPlumb.Defaults.Container property. You can still do this - we're in Javascript here of
course, it's a free-for-all - but it will be ignored.
Also Important If you happen to be using jsPlumb's draggable method to make other parts of your UI draggable (ie.
not just things you're plumbing together), be careful not to call draggable on the element that is acting as the
Container for the current instance, or you will see some odd situations occur when dragging. It is suggested that
the best thing to do if you wish to use jsPlumb to enable dragging on non-plumbed elements is to create a new instance:
var nonPlumbing = jsPlumb.getInstance();
nonPlumbing.draggable("some element");
jsPlumb.setContainer(document.getElementById("foo"));
...
jsPlumb.addEndpoint(someDiv, { endpoint options });
jsPlumb.setContainer("containerId");
...
jsPlumb.connect({ source:someDiv, target:someOtherDiv });
var j = jsPlumb.getInstance({
Container:"foo"
});
...
jsPlumb.addEndpoint(someDiv, { endpoint:options });
The container you choose should have position:relative set on it, because it is the origin of that element that jsPlumb
will use to compute the placement of the artefacts it adds to the DOM, and jsPlumb uses absolute positioning.
A common feature of interfaces using jsPlumb is that the elements are draggable. You should use jsPlumbInstance.draggable to configure this:
myInstanceOfJsPlumb.draggable("elementId");
...because if you don't, jsPlumb won't know that an element has been dragged, and it won't repaint the element.
Dragging is covered in detail on this page.
The speed at which jsPlumb executes, and the practical limit to the number of manageable connections, is greatly affected by the browser upon which it is being run. At the time of writing, it will probably not surprise you to learn that jsPlumb runs fastest in Chrome, followed by Safari/Firefox, and then IE browsers in descending version number order.
Every connect or addEndpoint call in jsPlumb ordinarily causes a repaint of the associated element, which for many
cases is what you want. But if you are performing some kind of "bulk" operation - like loading data on page load
perhaps - it is recommended that you suspend drawing before doing so:
jsPlumb.setSuspendDrawing(true);
...
- load up all your data here -
...
jsPlumb.setSuspendDrawing(false, true);
Notice the second argument in the last call to setSuspendDrawing: it instructs jsPlumb to immediately perform a full
repaint (by calling, internally, repaintEverything).
I said above it is recommended that you do this. It really is. It makes an enormous difference to the load time when you're dealing with a lot of Connections on slower browsers.
This function abstracts out the pattern of suspending drawing, doing something, and then re-enabling drawing:
jsPlumb.batch(fn, [doNotRepaintAfterwards]);
Example usage:
jsPlumb.batch(function() {
// import here
for (var i = 0, j = connections.length; i < j; i++) {
jsPlumb.connect(connections[i]);
}
});
Here, we've assumed that connections is an array of objects that would be suitable to pass to the connect method, for example:
{ source:"someElement", target:"someOtherElement" }
By default, this will run a repaint at the end. But you can suppress that, should you want to:
jsPlumb.batch(function() {
// import here
}, true);
Note this method used to be called doWhileSuspended and was renamed in version 1.7.3.
Continuous anchors are the type that require the most maths, because they have to calculate their position every time a paint cycle occurs.
Dynamic and Perimeter anchors are the next slowest (with Perimeter being slower than most Dynamic Anchors as they are actually Dynamic Anchors that have, by default, 60 locations to choose from).
Static anchors like Top, Bottom etc are the fastest.
