ClipBoardjs.min.js
clipboard.js
A modern approach to copy text to clipboard
No Flash. No frameworks. Just 3kb gzipped
Why
Copying text to the clipboard shouldn’t be hard. It shouldn’t require dozens of steps to configure or hundreds of KBs to
load. But most of all, it shouldn’t depend on Flash or any bloated framework.
That’s why clipboard.js exists.
Install
You can get it on npm.
1 | npm install clipboard --save |
Or if you’re not into package management,
just download a ZIPfile.
Setup
First, include the script located on the dist
folder or load it
from a third-party CDN provider.
1 | <script src="dist/clipboard.min.js"></script> |
Now, you need to instantiate it
by passing a DOM selector, HTML element,
or list of HTML elements.
1 | new Clipboard('.btn'); |
Internally, we need to fetch all elements that matches with your selector and attach event listeners for each one. But
guess what? If you have hundreds of matches, this operation can consume a lot of memory.
For this reason we use event delegation
which replaces multiple event listeners with just a single listener. After
all, #perfmatters.
Usage
We’re living a declarative renaissance, that’s why we decided to take advantage
of HTML5 data attributes for better
usability.
Copy text from another element
A pretty common use case is to copy content from another element. You can do that by adding a data-clipboard-target
attribute in your trigger element.
The value you include on this attribute needs to match another’s element selector.
1 | <!-- Target --> |
Cut text from another element
Additionally, you can define a data-clipboard-action
attribute to specify if you want to either copy
or cut
content.
If you omit this attribute, copy
will be used by default.
Cut to clipboard
1 | <!-- Target --> |
As you may expect, the cut
action only works on <input>
or <textarea>
elements.
Copy text from attribute
Truth is, you don’t even need another element to copy its content from. You can just include a data-clipboard-text
attribute in your trigger element.
Copy to clipboard
1 | <!-- Trigger --> |
Events
There are cases where you’d like to show some user feedback or capture what has been selected after a copy/cut
operation.
That’s why we fire custom events such as success
and error
for you to listen and implement your custom logic.
1 | var clipboard = new Clipboard('.btn'); |
For a live demonstration, just open your console :)
Tooltips
Each application has different design needs, that’s why clipboard.js does not include any CSS or built-in tooltip
solution.
The tooltips you see on this demo site were built using GitHub’s Primer. You may want
to check that out if you’re looking for a similar look and feel.
Advanced Usage
If you don’t want to modify your HTML, there’s a pretty handy imperative API for you to use. All you need to do is
declare a function, do your thing, and return a value.
For instance, if you want to dynamically set a target
, you’ll need to return a Node.
1 | new Clipboard('.btn', { |
If you want to dynamically set a text
, you’ll return a String.
1 | new Clipboard('.btn', { |
For use in Bootstrap Modals or with any other library that changes the focus you’ll want to set the focused element as
the container
value.
1 | new Clipboard('.btn', { |
Also, if you are working with single page apps, you may want to manage the lifecycle of the DOM more precisely. Here’s
how you clean up the events and objects that we create.
1 | var clipboard = new Clipboard('.btn'); |
Browser Support
This library relies on both Selection
and execCommand APIs. The first one
is supported by all browsers while the second one is supported in the following
browsers.
- Chrome 42+
- Edge 12+
- Firefox 41+
- IE 9+
Opera 29+
Safari 10+
The good news is that clipboard.js gracefully degrades if you need to support older browsers. All you have to do is show
a tooltip saying Copied!
when success
event is called and Press Ctrl+C to copy
when error
event is called
because the text is already selected.
You can also check if clipboard.js is supported or not by running Clipboard.isSupported()
, that way you can hide
copy/cut buttons from the UI.
Bonus
A browser extension that adds a “copy to clipboard” button to every code block on GitHub, MDN, Gist, StackOverflow,
StackExchange, npm, and even Medium.
ClipBoardjs.min.js