Tagify - tags input component

Transforms an input field or a textarea into a Tags component, in an easy, customizable way, with great performance and small code footprint, exploded with features.
Vanilla React Vue Angular

See Demos

Table of Contents

• Installation
• What can Tagify do
• Building the project
• Adding tags dynamically
• Output value
• Ajax whitelist
• Edit tags
• Drag & Sort
• DOM Templates
• Suggestions selectbox
• Tags mixed with text
• Single-Value Only
• React wrapper
• Angular wrapper
• Vue Example
• jQuery version
• FAQ
• CSS Variables
• Methods
• Events
• Hooks
• Settings

Installation

npm i @yaireo/tagify --save

Usage (in your bundle):

import Tagify from '@yaireo/tagify'

var tagify = new Tagify(...)

Don't forget to include tagify.css file in your project. CSS location: @yaireo/tagify/dist/tagify.css SCSS location: @yaireo/tagify/src/tagify.scss See SCSS usecase & example

Features

• Can be applied on input & textarea elements
• Supports mix content (text and tags together)
• Supports single-value mode (like <select>)
• Supports whitelist/blacklist
• Supports Templates for: component wrapper, tag items, suggestion list & suggestion items
• Shows suggestions selectbox (flexiable settings & styling) at full (component) width or next to the typed texted (caret)
• Allows setting suggestions' aliases for easier fuzzy-searching
• Auto-suggest input as-you-type with ability to auto-complete
• Can paste in multiple values: tag 1, tag 2, tag 3 or even newline-separated tags
• Tags can be created by Regex delimiter or by pressing the "Enter" key / focusing of the input
• Validate tags by Regex pattern
• Tags may be editable (double-click)
• ARIA accessibility support(Component too generic for any meaningful ARIA)
• Supports read-only mode to the whole componenet or per-tag
• Each tag can have any properties desired (class, data-whatever, readonly...)
• Automatically disallow duplicate tags (vis "settings" object)
• Has built-in CSS loader, if needed (Ex. AJAX whitelist pulling)
• Tags can be trimmed via hellip by giving max-width to the tag element in your CSS
• Easily change direction to RTL (via the SCSS file)
• Internet Explorer - A polyfill script should be used: tagify.polyfills.min.js (in /dist)
• Many useful custom events
• Original input/textarea element values kept in sync with Tagify

Building the project

Simply run gulp in your terminal, from the project's path (Gulp should be installed first).

Source files are this path: /src/

Output files, which are automatically generated using Gulp, are in: /dist/

The rest of the files are most likely irrelevant.

Adding tags dynamically

var tagify = new Tagify(...);

tagify.addTags(["banana", "orange", "apple"])

// or add tags with pre-defined propeties

tagify.addTags([{value:"banana", color:"yellow"}, {value:"apple", color:"red"}, {value:"watermelon", color:"green"}])

Output value

There are two possible ways to get the value of the tags:

1. Access the tagify's instance's value prop: tagify.value (Array of tags)
2. Access the original input's value: inputElm.value (Stringified Array of tags)

The most common way is to simply listen to the change event on the original input

var inputElm = document.querySelector,
    tagify = new Tagify (inputElm);

inputElm.addEventListener('change', onChange)

function onChange(e){
  // outputs a String
  console.log(e.target.value)
}

Modify original input value format

Default format is a JSON string:
'[{"value":"cat"}, {"value":"dog"}]'

I recommend keeping this because some situations might have values such as addresses (tags contain commas):
'[{"value":"Apt. 2A, Jacksonville, FL 39404"}, {"value":"Forrest Ray, 191-103 Integer Rd., Corona New Mexico"}]'

Another example for complex tags state might be disabled tags, or ones with custom identifier class:
(tags can be clicked, so delevopers can choose to use this to disable/enable tags)
'[{"value":"cat", "disabled":true}, {"value":"dog"}, {"value":"bird", "class":"color-green"}]'

To change the format, assuming your tags have no commas and are fairly simple:

var tagify = new Tagify(inputElm, {
  originalInputValueFormat: valuesArr => valuesArr.map(item => item.value).join(',')
})

Output:
"cat,dog"

Ajax whitelist

Dynamically-loaded suggestions list (whitelist) from the server (as the user types) is a frequent need to many.

Tagify comes with its own loading animation, which is a very lightweight CSS-only code, and the loading state is controlled by the method tagify.loading which accepts true or false as arguments.

Below is a basic example using the fetch API. I advise to abort the last request on any input before starting a new request.

var input = document.querySelector('input'),
    tagify = new Tagify(input, {whitelist:[]}),
    controller; // for aborting the call

// listen to any keystrokes which modify tagify's input
tagify.on('input', onInput)

function onInput( e ){
  var value = e.detail.value;
  tagify.settings.whitelist.length = 0; // reset the whitelist

  // https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AbortController/abort
  controller && controller.abort();
  controller = new AbortController();

  // show loading animation and hide the suggestions dropdown
  tagify.loading(true).dropdown.hide.call(tagify)

  fetch('http://get_suggestions.com?value=' + value, {signal:controller.signal})
    .then(RES => RES.json())
    .then(function(whitelist){
      // update inwhitelist Array in-place
      tagify.settings.whitelist.splice(0, whitelist.length, ...whitelist)
      tagify.loading(false).dropdown.show.call(tagify, value); // render the suggestions dropdown
    })
}

Edit tags

Tags which aren't read-only can be edited by double-clicking them (by default) or by changing the editTags setting to 1, making tags editable by single-clicking them.

The value is saved on blur or by pressing enter key. Pressing Escape will revert the change trigger blur. ctrlz will revert the change if an edited tag was marked as not valid (perhaps duplicate or blacklisted)

To prevent all tags from being allowed to be editable, set the editTags setting to false (or null).
To do the same but for specific tag(s), set those tags' data with editable property set to false:

<input value='[{"value":"foo", "editable":false}, {"value":"bar"}]'>

Drag & Sort

To be able to sort tags by draging, a 3rd-party script is needed.

I have made a very simple drag & drop (~`11kb` unminified) script which uses HTML5 native API and it is available to download via NPM or Github but any other drag & drop script may possibly work. I could not find in the whole internet a decent lightweight script.

Integration example:

var tagify = new Tagify(inputElement)

// bind "DragSort" to Tagify's main element and tell
// it that all the items with the below "selector" are "draggable"
var dragsort = new DragSort(tagify.DOM.scope, {
    selector: '.'+tagify.settings.classNames.tag,
    callbacks: {
        dragEnd: onDragEnd
    }
})

// must update Tagify's value according to the re-ordered nodes in the DOM
function onDragEnd(elm){
    tagify.updateValueByDOMTags()
}

DOM Templates

It's possible to control the templates for some of the HTML elements tagify is using by modifying the settings.templates Object with your own custom functions which must return an HTML string.

Available templates are: wrapper, tag, dropdown, dropdownItem and the optional dropdownItemNoMatch which is a special template for rendering a suggestion item (in the dropdown list) only if there were no matches found for the typed input.

View templates

Suggestions selectbox

The suggestions selectbox is shown is a whitelist Array of Strings or Objects was passed in the settings when the Tagify instance was created. Suggestions list will only be rendered if there are at least two matching suggestions (case-insensitive).

The selectbox dropdown will be appended to the document's <body> element and will be rendered by default in a position below (bottom of) the Tagify element. Using the keyboard arrows up/down will highlight an option from the list, and hitting the Enter key to select.

It is possible to tweak the selectbox dropdown via 2 settings:

• enabled - this is a numeral value which tells Tagify when to show the suggestions dropdown, when a minimum of N characters were typed.
• maxItems - Limits the number of items the suggestions selectbox will render

var input = document.querySelector('input'),
    tagify = new Tagify(input, {
        whitelist : ['aaa', 'aaab', 'aaabb', 'aaabc', 'aaabd', 'aaabe', 'aaac', 'aaacc'],
        dropdown : {
            classname     : "color-blue",
            enabled       : 0,              // show the dropdown immediately on focus
            maxItems      : 5,
            position      : "text",         // place the dropdown near the typed text
            closeOnSelect : false,          // keep the dropdown open after selecting a suggestion
            highlightFirst: true
        }
    });

Will render

<div class="tagify__dropdown tagify__dropdown--text" style="left:993.5px; top:106.375px; width:616px;">
    <div class="tagify__dropdown__wrapper">
      <div class="tagify__dropdown__item tagify__dropdown__item--active" value="aaab">aaab</div>
      <div class="tagify__dropdown__item" value="aaabb">aaabb</div>
      <div class="tagify__dropdown__item" value="aaabc">aaabc</div>
      <div class="tagify__dropdown__item" value="aaabd">aaabd</div>
      <div class="tagify__dropdown__item" value="aaabe">aaabe</div>
    </div>
</div>

By default searching the suggestions is using fuzzy-search (see settings).

If you wish to assign alias to items (in your suggestion list), add the searchBy property to whitelist items you wish to have an alias for.

In the below example, typing a part of a string which is included in the searchBy property, for example land midd" - the suggested item which match the value "Israel" will be rendered in the suggestions (dropdown) list.

Example for a suggestion item alias

whitelist = [
    ...
    { value:'Israel', code:'IL', searchBy:'holy land, desert, middle east' },
    ...
]

Another handy setting is dropdown.searchKeys which, like the above dropdown.searchBy setting, allows expanding the search of any typed terms to more than the value property of the whitelist items (if items are a Collection).

Example whitelist:

[
  {
    value    : 123456,
    nickname : "foo",
    email    : "foo@mail.com"
  },
  {
    value    : 987654,
    nickname : "bar",
    email    : "bar@mail.com"
  },
  ...more..
]

// setting to search in other keys:

{
  dropdown: {
    searchKeys: ["nickname", "email"] //  fuzzy-search matching for those whitelist items' properties
  }
}

Mixed-Content

To use this feature it must be toggled - see settings.

When mixing text with tags, the original textarea (or input) element will have a value as follows:

[[cartman]]⁠ and [[kyle]]⁠ do not know [[Homer simpson]]⁠

If the inital value of the textarea or input is formatted as the above example, tagify will try to automatically convert everything between [[ & ]] to a tag, if tag exists in the whitelist, so make sure when the Tagify instance is initialized, that it has tags with the correct value property that match the same values that appear between [[ & ]].

Applying the setting dropdown.position:"text" is encouraged for mixed-content tags, because the suggestions list will be rendered right next to the caret location and not the the bottom of the Tagify componenet, which might look weird when there is already a lot of content at multiple lines.

If a tag does not exists in the whitelist, it may be created by the user and all you should do is listen to the add event and update your local/remote state.

Single-Value

Similar to native <Select> element, but allows typing text as value.

React

A Tagify React component is exported from react.tagify.js:

Note: You will need to inport Tagify's CSS also, either by javasceript or by SCSS @import (which is preferable)

import Tags from "@yaireo/tagify/dist/react.tagify" // React-wrapper file
import "@yaireo/tagify/dist/tagify.css" // Tagify CSS

const App = () => {
  return (
    <Tags
      tagifyRef={tagifyRef} // optional Ref object for the Tagify instance itself, to get access to  inner-methods
      settings={settings}  // tagify settings object
      value="a,b,c"
      {...tagifyProps}   // dynamic props such as "loading", "showDropdown:'abc'", "value"
      onChange={e => (e.persist(), console.log("CHANGED:", e.target.value))}
    />
  )
})

To gain full acess to Tagify's inner methods, A custom ref can be used:

<Tags tagifyRef={tagifyRef} ... />

See live demo for React integration examples.

Angular

TagifyComponent which will be used by your template as <tagify>

<div>
  testing tagify wrapper
  <tagify [settings]="settings"
          (add)="onAdd($event)"
          (remove)="onRemove($event)">
  </tagify>
  <button (click)="clearTags()">clear</button>
  <button (click)="addTags()">add Tags</button>
</div>

TagifyService

(The tagifyService is a singletone injected by angular, do not create a new instance of it) Remember to add TagifyService to your module definition.

import {Component, OnDestroy} from '@angular/core';
import {TagifyService} from '@yaireo/tagify';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  templateUrl: './app.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent implements OnDestroy {

  constructor(private tagifyService: TagifyService) {}
  public settings = { blacklist: ['fucking', 'shit']};

  onAdd(tagify) {
    console.log('added a tag', tagify);
  }

  onRemove(tags) {
    console.log('removed a tag', tags);
  }
  clearTags() {
    this.tagifyService.removeAll();
  }
  addTags() {
    this.tagifyService.addTags(['this', 'is', 'cool']);
  }
  ngOnDestroy() {
    this.tagifyService.destroy();
  }
}

jQuery version

jQuery.tagify.js

A jQuery wrapper verison is also available, but I advise not using it because it's basically the exact same as the "normal" script (non-jqueryfied) and all the jQuery's wrapper does is allowing to chain the event listeners for ('add', 'remove', 'invalid')

$('[name=tags]')
    .tagify()
    .on('add', function(e, tagData){
        console.log('added', ...tagData)  // data, index, and DOM node
    });

Accessing methods can be done via the .data('tagify'):

$('[name=tags]').tagify();
// get tags from the server (ajax) and add them:
$('[name=tags]').data('tagify').addTags('aaa, bbb, ccc')

HTML input & textarea attributes

The below list of attributes affect Tagify.
These can also be set by Tagify settings Object manually, and not declerativly (via attributes).

<input pattern='^[A-Za-z_✲ ]{1,15}

<input placeholder='please type your tags'>

<input readOnly>

<input autofocus>

<input required>

FAQ

List of questions & scenarios which might come up during development with Tagify:

tags/whitelist data strcture

Tagify does not accept just any kind of data structure.
If a tag data is represented as an Object, it must contain a unique property value which Tagify uses to check if a tag already exists, among other things, so make sure it is present.

Incorrect

[{ "id":1, "name":"foo bar" }]

Correct

[{ "id":1, "value": 1, "name":"foo bar" }]

[{ "value":1, "name":"foo bar" }]

[{ "value":"foo bar" }]

// ad a simple array of Strings
["foo bar"]

Save changes (Ex. to a server)

In framework-less projects, the developer should save the state of the Tagify component (somewhere), and the question is:
when should the state be saved? On every change made to Tagify's internal state (tagify.value via the update() method).

var tagify = new Tagify(...)

// listen to "change" events on the "original" input/textarea element
tagify.DOM.originalInput.addEventListener('change', onTagsChange)

// This example uses async/await but you can use Promises, of course, if you prefer.
async function onTagsChange(e){
  const {name, value} = e.target
  // "imaginary" async function "saveToServer" should get the field's name & value
  await saveToServer(name, value)
}

If you are using React/Vue/Angular or any "modern" framework, then you already know how to attach "onChange" event listeners to your <input>/<textarea> elements, so the above is irrelevant.

Render tags in one single line

Stopping tags from wrapping to new lines, add this to your .tagify CSS Rule:

flex-wrap: nowrap;

• Double-click tag fires both "edit" & "click" custom events
• Manualy open the suggestions dropdown
• Render your own suggestions dropdown
• Allow max length on mix mode
• Always show dropdown
• Limit the length of a tag value (minimum & maximum)
• Mixed mode initial value
• Random colors for each tag
• Format input value for server side
• Writing to tagify textarea
• Scroll all tags within one line, instead of growing vertically
• Insert emoji at caret location when editing a tag
• propagate change event
• Manually update tag data after it was added
• Ajax Whitelist with "enforceWhitelist" setting enabled
• Custom (mutiple) tag valitation & AJAX
• Make tags from pasted multi-line text

CSS Variables

Learn more about CSS Variables) (custom properties)

Tagify's utilizes CSS variables which allow easy customization without the need to manually write CSS. If you do wish to heavily style your Tagify components, then you can (and should) use the below variables within your modified styles as much as you can.

For a live example, see the demos page.

Full list of Tagify's SCSS variables

Methods

Tagify is prototype based and There are many methods, but I've chosen to list the most relevant ones:

Events

All triggered events return the instance's scope (tagify).
See e.detail for custom event additional data.

var tagify = new Tagify(...)

// events can be chainable, and multiple events may be binded for the same callback
tagify
  .on('input', e => console.log(e.detail))
  .on('edit:input edit:updated edit:start edit:keydown', e => console.log(e.type, e.detail))

var tagify = new Tagify(inputNode, {
  callbacks: {
    "change": (e) => console.log(e.detail))
    "dropdown:show": (e) => console.log(e.detail))
  }
})

Hooks

Promise-based hooks for async program flow scenarios.

Allows to "hook" (intervene) at certain points of the program, which were selected as a suitable place to pause the program flow and wait for further instructions on how/if to procceed.

var input = document.querySelector('input')
var tagify = new Tagify(input,{
    hooks: {
        /**
         * Removes a tag
         * @param  {Array}  tags [Array of Objects [{node:..., data:...}, {...}, ...]]
         */
        beforeRemoveTag : function( tags ){
            return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
                confirm("Remove " + tags[0].data.value + "?")
                    ? resolve()
                    : reject()
            })
        }
    }
})

Settings

FAQ

List of questions & scenarios which might come up during development with Tagify:

tags/whitelist data strcture

Tagify does not accept just any kind of data structure.
If a tag data is represented as an __INLINE_CODE_69__, it must contain a unique property __INLINE_CODE_70__ which Tagify uses to check if a tag already exists, among other things, so make sure it is present.

Incorrect

Correct

Save changes (Ex. to a server)

In framework-less projects, the developer should save the state of the Tagify component (somewhere), and the question is:
when should the state be saved? On every change made to Tagify's internal state (__INLINE_CODE_71__ via the __INLINE_CODE_72__ method).

If you are using React/Vue/Angular or any "modern" framework, then you already know how to attach "onChange" event listeners to your __INLINE_CODE_73__/__INLINE_CODE_74__ elements, so the above is irrelevant.

Render tags in one single line

Stopping tags from wrapping to new lines, add this to your __INLINE_CODE_75__ CSS Rule:

• Double-click tag fires both "edit" & "click" custom events
• Manualy open the suggestions dropdown
• Render your own suggestions dropdown
• Allow max length on mix mode
• Always show dropdown
• Limit the length of a tag value (minimum & maximum)
• Mixed mode initial value
• Random colors for each tag
• Format input value for server side
• Writing to tagify textarea
• Scroll all tags within one line, instead of growing vertically
• Insert emoji at caret location when editing a tag
• propagate __INLINE_CODE_76__ event
• Manually update tag data after it was added
• Ajax Whitelist with "enforceWhitelist" setting enabled
• Custom (mutiple) tag valitation & AJAX
• Make tags from pasted multi-line text

CSS Variables

Learn more about CSS Variables) (custom properties)

Tagify's utilizes CSS variables which allow easy customization without the need to manually write CSS. If you do wish to heavily style your Tagify components, then you can (and should) use the below variables within your modified styles as much as you can.

For a live example, see the demos page.

Full list of Tagify's SCSS variables

Methods

__INLINE_CODE_84__ is prototype based and There are many methods, but I've chosen to list the most relevant ones:

Events

All triggered events return the instance's scope (tagify).
See __INLINE_CODE_158__ for custom event additional data.

Hooks

Promise-based hooks for async program flow scenarios.

Allows to "hook" (intervene) at certain points of the program, which were selected as a suitable place to pause the program flow and wait for further instructions on how/if to procceed.

Settings