Numerous modals with dynamic content - templates

Question

I am using Twitter Bootstrap's modals throughout a web application. I am also using Mustache templates to generate the information to display inside the modals. The problem is that I find myself creating new modals for nearly every single form that is rendered to the screen and I feel that this violates DRY. I am considering creating a global modal object that is defined in the 'window' object and can be accessed throughout my application. When I want to display a new form I just render the form into the global modal object and then show it. Can anyone give me some advice on how to better handle numerous forms with modals?

Answer 1

I think you have the right idea. If you have a lot of modals, creating new ones can get repetitive. I've done something similar to what you proposed: create a single modal object that can be reused for a variety of modals.
In the past I used jQuery dialog, but the principle is entirely the same. Create a JavaScript module with some boilerplate HTML, that you can use to display any number of forms (essentially HTML content).
I'll try to propose a very basic implementation without knowing too much about your application.
HTML based from the Bootstrap example here:
<!-- Modal -->
<div id="myModal" class="modal hide fade" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="myModalLabel" aria-hidden="true">
<div class="modal-header">
<button type="button" class="close" data-dismiss="modal" aria-hidden="true">×</button>
<h3 id="dynamicHeader">
<!-- Our header will go here -->
</h3>
</div>
<div class="modal-body" id="dynamicBody">
<!-- Our body will go here -->
</div>
<div class="modal-footer">
Close
Save changes
</div>
</div>
Notice the unique id's I've added to the h3 and the div.modal-body. We'll use those in JavaScript to dynamically inject each form's title and content.
JavaScript:
var ModalManager = (function() {
// cache some DOM references
var $dynamicHeader = $('#dynamicHeader');
var $dynamicBody = $('#dynamicBody');
var $myModal = $('#myModal');
var launch = function(header, body) {
$dynamicHeader.html(header);
$dynamicBody.html(body);
$myModal.modal(/* options here */);
};
return {
launch: launch
/* expose more API methods here! */
};
}());
Here is an example usage!
HTML w/ JavaScript:
<div id="form1">
<div class="formHeader">
Form One
</div>
<div class="formBody">
<p>Html and stuff</p>
</div>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
// Using a closure to protect globals
// This would probably go in your click handler to launch a given modal
(function() {
var headerHtml = $('form1 .formHeader').html();
var bodyHtml = $('form1 .formBody').html();
ModalManager.launch(headerHtml, bodyHtml );
}());
</script>
Finally, I wrapped all of that up in a jsFiddle which demonstrates the ability to launch two different forms.
Link: jsFiddle
I used jQuery as it should be included with the Bootstrap code for the modal. It will pull out the header and body HTML that are specific to each form, and populate your common modal HTML in the DOM. Then when you launch the modal it will display what looks like a different modal, but you've centralized the common aspects so you're not repeating them anymore!
There's a lot more you can do but that's basically the gist. My own implementation exposed means to configure the buttons dynamically, for example. Depending on what you want configurable, you can add an options parameter that passes on to the modal() function, or has other properties specific to your application that ModalManager can handle. You can definitely use templating to carry out some of these features, it's just not essential to the example I've setup.
I hope that helps!

Answer 2

I'm not quite sure what you are asking. Mustache does have looping functionality, so you could pass in an array of modals, and Mustache should generate all of the code.
I actually just created a video showing how to build a Mustache template for Twitter Bootstrap's Alert component, and implement it via PHP and JavaScript. It also features the looping functionality I spoke of. Maybe that will help? Here is the link: http://mikemclin.net/mustache-templates-for-php-and-javascript/