Checkbox Filtering Using MooTools ElementFilter

By  on  

When I first wrote MooTools ElementFilter, I didn't think much of it. Fast forward eight months later and I've realized I've used the plugin a billion times. Hell, even one of the "big 3" search engines is using it for their maps application. There's one more place I'd like to use it. My employer uses a basic SPAM filtering system which allows me to see emails that were incorrectly (or correctly) caught in SPAM, click a checkbox, and click a "Deliver" button. The problem is that it will catch a bunch of valid emails with very similar subject lines, so I have to hunt down all of the emails, check the email's checkbox, and keep searching. Inefficient to say the least. That's why I've used ElementFilter to find LABEL elements with the given search text and automatically check their checkboxes.

The Sample HTML

<ul id="my-list">
<li><input type="checkbox" id="chkADDRESS" /> <label for="chkADDRESS">ADDRESS</label></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" id="chkAPPLET" /> <label for="chkAPPLET">APPLET</label></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" id="chkAREA" /> <label for="chkAREA">AREA</label></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" id="chkA" /> <label for="chkA">A</label></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" id="chkBASE" /> <label for="chkBASE">BASE</label></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" id="chkBASEFONT" /> <label for="chkBASEFONT">BASEFONT</label></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" id="chkBIG" /> <label for="chkBIG">BIG</label></li>
<!-- ... more ... -->
</ul>

I've used a simple list of HTML elements for my example. Having 100 "VIAGRA!!!" labels really wouldn't be helpful.

The MooTools JavaScript

/* usage */
window.addEvent('domready',function() {
	var myFilter = new ElementFilter('search-term', '#my-list label', {
		trigger: 'keyup',
		cache: true,
		onShow: function(element) {
			$(element.get('for')).checked = true;
		},
		onHide: function(element) {
			$(element.get('for')).checked = false;
		}
	});
});

If you aren't familiar with ElementFilter, be sure to read the original post. The only code specific to my purpose is in the onShow and onHide methods. Awesome!

Give it a shot. I'll be bribing my IT team to put something like this in place. It will make managing SPAM much easier!

Recent Features

  • By
    Introducing MooTools Templated

    One major problem with creating UI components with the MooTools JavaScript framework is that there isn't a great way of allowing customization of template and ease of node creation. As of today, there are two ways of creating: new Element Madness The first way to create UI-driven...

  • By
    LightFace:  Facebook Lightbox for MooTools

    One of the web components I've always loved has been Facebook's modal dialog.  This "lightbox" isn't like others:  no dark overlay, no obnoxious animating to size, and it doesn't try to do "too much."  With Facebook's dialog in mind, I've created LightFace:  a Facebook lightbox...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create Snook-Style Navigation Using MooTools

    Jonathan Snook debuted a great tutorial last September detailing how you can use an image and a few jQuery techniques to create a slick mouseover effect. I revisited his article and ported its two most impressive effects to MooTools. The Images These are the same...

  • By
    Making the Firefox Logo from HTML

    When each new t-shirt means staving off laundry for yet another day, swag quickly becomes the most coveted perk at any tech company. Mozilla WebDev had pretty much everything going for it: brilliant people, interesting problems, awesome office. Everything except a t-shirt. That had to change. The basic...

Discussion

  1. Nice! Can this be extended with regular expressions?

  2. David – this is a usability masterpiece. I salute you!

  3. @Chris the Developer: As well you should. ;)

  4. David, simply amazing! You keep on rocking with every Mootools solution.

  5. First time in your blog! Seems quite interesting and of course informative!

  6. rakesh juyal

    Nice one. How about enhancing the code to support multiple search term.

    like if the search term is ap;c then it should select all checkboxes whose label starts with ap [ applet ] or c [ caption, center, cite, code ]

  7. rakesh juyal

    Nice one. How about enhancing the code to support multiple search term.

    like if the search term is ap;c then it should select all checkboxes whose label starts with ap [ applet ] or c [ caption, center, cite, code ]

  8. Mangesh vyas

    Hello sir

    Its really good as always………
    Thanks

  9. scy

    Can this be done with jquery

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!