SVG Basics - JavaScript in SVG - Print and Web Publishing SVG Viewer

JavaScript in SVG

The other sections of the tutorial deal with how to use SVG to make beautiful shapes. In this section, let's put those shapes to work doing some real work by using Javascript to glue them together. Most SVG viewers support JavaScript (ECMAScript) as their main scripting language but SVG is not limited to only that language.

Adding Javascript

JavaScript can either be embeded or in an external file. The next code example shows both styles.

Code 1. Adding JavaScript (EcmaScript) to a SVG document.

Events and Javascript

To preform an action when an event occurs you just add the event handler to the associated object. This is much like HTML except the event names must be all lowercase letters.

Event

When Called

onclick When the object is clicked (mouse button down and up)

onmousedown When the mouse button is pushed down on the object

onmouseup When the mouse button is released on the object

onmouseover When the mouse cursor moves over the object

onmousemove When the mouse moves in the object

onmouseout When the mouse cursors leaves the object

Table 1. Events for Graphical Elements.

Example

Code

<script type="text/ecmascript">
<![CDATA[ ... function updateStats() 
{ svgDocument.getElementById("clicks").firstChild.data     
= "onclick = " + click; 
svgDocument.getElementById("mousedowns").firstChild.data         
= "onmousedown = " + mouseDown;     ... }  
function msClick (evt) 
{     click++;     updateStats(); } ... ]]>
</script>  <circle cx="50%" cy="25%" r="40" 
fill="lightyellow"     onclick="msClick()"     
onmousedown="msDown()"     onmouseup="msUp()"     
onmouseover="msOver()"     onmousemove="msMove()"     
onmouseout="msOut()"     />

Example 1. Calling a function on an event. (Download)

Find the SVG Document Root

The current version of the Adobe SVG plugin automatically sets the variable "svgDocument" to be the SVG document root. This is a useful nonstandard feature of the viewer but to ensure compatibility with older versions of the plugin you should set the variable if it isn't present. To do this, add an init function which is called when the onload event occurs which extracts and sets the document root from the event.

<svg onload="init(evt)" ...>
 <script type="text/ecmascript"><![CDATA[
 function init(evt) {
     if ( window.svgDocument == null )
         svgDocument = evt.target.ownerDocument;
 }
 ]]></script>

Code 2. Find and set the document root.

The Batik SVG viewer sets the variable "window.document" to be the SVG document root and is incompatible with the above code.

JavaScript Animation

If SMIL animation doesn't quite handle how you want to animate something in SVG then the alternative is using JavaScript (EcmaScript). SMIL animation is very handy but there are plenty of behaviours that can be much more easily modeled by using JavaScript.

Article Series

This article is part 15 of a 15 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below: