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Read more about the article Implementing a suggestion box in Susper Angular JS Front-end

Implementing a suggestion box in Susper Angular JS Front-end

In Susper, we have implemented a suggestion box for our input box. This was done using Yacy suggest API. This is how the box looks:

In this blog, let us see how to implement such a box using html, css, twitter-bootstrap and typescript. You can also check the code at the Susper repository.

The html code is simple and straightforward:

 

class=“suggestion-box” *ngIf=“results”>

</div>

A few points to notice :

  • *ngIf=”results” ensures that the box is displayed only when it has suggestions to display and not otherwise
  • The [routerLink] and [queryParams] attributes together link every result to the search page, with the correct query.

This is the css code :

a {
text-decoration: none;
}.suggestions {
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 17px;
margin-left: 2.4%;
}.query-suggestions:hover {
background: #E3E3E3;
}.suggestion-box{
width: 635.2px;
max-width: 100%;
border: 1px solid rgba(150,150,150,0.3);
background-color: white;
margin-left: -25.7px;
position: absolute;
box–shadow: 0px 0.2px 0px;
}

A few points to notice again:

    • Box-shadow: This gives the drop up a shadow effect, which looks really nice, the first 3 parameters are for dimensions (X-offset, Y-offset, Blur). The rgba specifies color, with parameters as (red-component, green-component, blue-component, opacity).
    • Text-decoration: This attribute is used to add/remove decoration like underline for links.
    • Font-family: The font-family mentioned here is Arial, if Arial is unavailable sans-serif is used.

In the typescript file, there are two major tasks:

  1. Splice the results if greater than five. A neat suggestion-box should have a maximum of five results, hence we splice the results:

this.results.concat(res[0]);
if ( this.results.length > 5) {
this.results = this.results.splice (0, 5);
  1. Hide the suggestion-box if there are no suggestions from the API:
@Output() hidecomponent: EventEmitter<any> = new EventEmitter<any>();
…
this.query$.subscribe( query => {
if (query) {
this.autocompleteservice.getsearchresults(query).subscribe(res => {
if (res) {
this.results = res[1];
if (this.results.length === 0) {
this.hidecomponent.emit(1);
} else {
this.hidecomponent.emit(0);
}

If you want a more elaborate picture, you can view the entire html, css and typescript files of the auto-complete component.

This tutorial, http://4dev.tech/2016/03/tutorial-creating-an-angular2-autocomplete/ is very useful in case you want to implement auto complete suggestion feature from scratch.

In addition, this stack overflow thread has some interesting insights too: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35881815/implementing-autocomplete-for-angular2

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Read more about the article Implementing a Pagination Bar in Susper Angular JS Frontend

Implementing a Pagination Bar in Susper Angular JS Frontend

Searching on Susper most queries will have a number of search results. These results may span over several pages, and hence, a well designed pagination bar becomes essential for easy navigation. This blog deals with how we created the pagination bar in Susper. This is how the pagination bar in Susper looks:

There are a maximum of 10 pages displayed at any point of time.
At times you may have lesser results too:

where you can either directly click on a page or use the Previous and Next buttons for navigation. As you move along the pages, this is how it looks:

We will now see how we go about creating this bar.
The html source code( with a line by line explanation of the code):

<div class=“pagination-bar”>
<div class=“pagination-property” *ngIf=“noOfPages>1”>
<nav aria–label=“Page navigation” *ngIf=“(items$ | async)?.length!=0”>
  • Previous button is used to decrease the current page number, clicking on the first S in ‘Susper’ also accomplishes this task. Notice that this button is to be displayed only if you are not already on the first page of Susper.
<li class=“page-item” *ngFor=“let num of getNumber(maxPage)”><span class=“page-link” *ngIf=“presentPage>=4 && presentPage-3+num<=noOfPages” [class.active_page]=”getStyle(presentPage-3+num)”
(click)=”getPresentPage(presentPage-3+num)” href=“#”>

[class.active_page]=”getStyle(presentPage-3+num)” class=“page-text”>U

class=“page-number”>{{presentPage-3+num}}</span></span>
<span class=“page-link” *ngIf=“presentPage<4 && num<=noOfPages” [class.active_page]=”num+1 == presentPage“ (click)=”getPresentPage(num+1)”
href=“#”>

[class.active_page]=”num+1 == presentPage“ class=“page-text”>U</span>

class=“page-number”>{{num+1}}</span></span></li>

  • The above lines specify that we want to update our pagination bar only if the user has navigated more than the first three pages  
  • class.active_page gives correct css for the active page and getStyle() tells whether that particular page is active or not  
  • getPresentPage() uses the current page number to calculate which results to display  

<li class=“page-item”><span class=“page-link” (click)=”incPresentPage()”>

class=“page-text next”>SPER

</span></li>
<li class=“page-item2” *ngIf=“!getStyle(maxPage)”><span class=“spl” (click)=”incPresentPage()”>

class=“arrow”>>
class=“side-text”>Next

</span></li></ul>
</div>
</nav>
</div>

  • This part is used to increment the present page, and show the next/SPER message. Notice that it should be displayed only if you are not already on the last page

The attached typescript functions:

incPresentPage() {
this.presentPage = Math.min(this.noOfPages, this.presentPage + 1);
this.getPresentPage(this.presentPage);
}decPresentPage() {
this.presentPage = Math.max(1, this.presentPage – 1);
this.getPresentPage(this.presentPage);
}
  • incPresentPage() increments the present page, if possible(that is you have not reached your maximum pages already).
  • decPresentPage() decrements the present page, if possible(that is you have not reached page 1 already).

getStyle(page) {
return ((this.presentPage) === page);
}
  • getStyle() returns true if passed page is the present page, useful to apply different css classes to the active page

getPresentPage(N) {
this.presentPage = N;
let urldata = Object.assign({}, this.searchdata);
urldata.start = (this.presentPage – 1) * urldata.rows;
this.store.dispatch(new queryactions.QueryServerAction(urldata));}
  • getPresentPage () is used to change the page, and navigate to the page, with the correct rows of data

And you are done! You now have a working pagination bar to plugin at the bottom of your search results!

You can check out this elaborate tutorial on implementing Pagination bars from w3 schools : https://www.w3schools.com/css/css3_pagination.asp

Continue ReadingImplementing a Pagination Bar in Susper Angular JS Frontend

Responsive Image Overlay

Image overlay is a very common concept in front-end development. It is easy to implement but difficult when we deal it with different screen sizes, where we need to cover the image with the overlay each time the screen size is changed. I have gone through various blog posts when I need to implement the same for Open-event webapp and researched a solution that works for all screen sizes without any media query.

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How to add an overlay to an image ?

If we need four images in a single row nearly 300*300px.  The code below shows the markup.

image-holder : The parent class to take the image and overlay inside it.

background-image: This class takes image source.

responsive-overlay: This is the key point to make it responsive. Responsive-overlay contains a class hover-state to add overlay absolutely and a class social-links.

social-links: It adds content to hover-state.

 

<div class="image-holder">
  <img class="background-image" alt="" src="">
   <div class="responsive-overlay">
     <div class="hover-state text-center preserve3d">
       <div class="social-links vertical-align">

       </div>
     </div>
   </div>
 </div>

The styling is written with SASS in .scss file as shown below.

//overlayimage and backgroundshade can be set in config.scss

 .image-holder {
   position: relative;
   overflow: hidden;
   margin-bottom: 12px;

   .background-image {
     height: 300px;
     width: 300px;
     display: block;
     margin: 0 auto;
     background-color: $background-shade;
    }
 
   .responsive-overlay {
     @include responsiveoverlay;

    .preserve3d {
       height: 300px;
      }

    .hover-state {
     @include hoverstate;
     height: 300px;
     width: 300px;
    }

  @mixin responsiveoverlay {
     height: 100%;
     position: absolute;
     top: 0;
     width: 100%;
}

   @mixin hoverstate {
     background: $overlayimage;
     display: block;
     height: 300px;
     left: 0;
     margin: 0 auto;
     opacity: 0;
     position: relative;
     top: 0;
     -moz-transition: all 0.3s ease-out;
     -webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease-out;
     transition: all 0.3s ease-out;
     width: 300px;
     z-index: 2;
   }

This code will work for responsiveness as well. The main catch here is the responsive-overlay class which is made 100% in width but set to position absolute. The images which are 300 * 300 px in size will take an overlay of the same size because of hover-state class. Instead, if we adjust sizes of images in small screens the above code will adjust overlay on the image automatically.

Like, on tablets we can have an overlay like this.

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And on mobile screen output is like that :

23

Conclusion

Responsiveness is easy if we follow correct concepts. Here, the concepts of absolute and relative positioning in CSS have done the magic. Now we can play by adding different contents and effect on hover following the same basics.

Continue ReadingResponsive Image Overlay