I want to add a rich text editor to my GWT application. TinyMCE is one candidate, and so is the rich text editor in SmartGWT. Do you have any advice about choosing between the two?
I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss TinyMCE - it has many advantages over the GWT's rich text editor - for me, it was the plugins - I needed a rich text editor that would produce bbcode, not html - can't do that with GWT's components, unfortunately. So I extended the standard bbcode plugin for TinyMCE to suit my needs and voilà :)
Below is a class I used to integrate TinyMCE into GWT (slightly modified from the original class by Aaron Watkins in order to work around drag and drop issues and some other stuff ;)):
Edit: slightly changed to include suggestions by David
/**
* Created on 20/08/2007
*
* Wrapper for TinyMCE
* NOTE: Expects Javascript includes to be in enclosing HTML
*
* Author: Aaron Watkins (aaronDOTjDOTwatkinsATgmailDOTcom)
* Website: http://www.goannatravel.com
* Home Page for initial release of this widget: http://consult.goannatravel.com/code/gwt/tinymce.php
*
* Copyright [Aaron Watkins]
*
* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
* You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
* limitations under the License.
*/
import com.google.gwt.user.client.Command;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.DOM;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.DeferredCommand;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.Composite;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.HTMLPanel;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.HasText;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.TextArea;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.VerticalPanel;
/**
* TinyMCE -
*
* A wrapper widget for using TinyMCE. It contains a number of JSNI methods that
* I have found useful during development
*
* @author Aaron Watkins
*/
public class TinyMCE extends Composite implements HasText {
private TextArea ta;
private String id;
public TinyMCE(int width, int height) {
super();
VerticalPanel panel = new VerticalPanel();
initWidget(panel);
panel.setWidth("100%");
id = HTMLPanel.createUniqueId();
ta = new TextArea();
ta.setCharacterWidth(width);
ta.setVisibleLines(height);
DOM.setElementAttribute(ta.getElement(), "id", id);
DOM.setStyleAttribute(ta.getElement(), "width", "100%");
panel.add(ta);
}
/**
* getID() -
*
* @return the MCE element's ID
*/
public String getID() {
return id;
}
protected static native String getEditorContents(
String elementId) /*-{
return $wnd.tinyMCE.get(elementId).getContent();
}-*/;
protected static native void setEditorContents(
String elementId, String html) /*-{
$wnd.tinyMCE.execInstanceCommand(
elementId, 'mceSetContent', false, html, false);
}-*/;
public void setText(String text) {
setEditorContents(id, text);
}
public String getText() {
return getEditorContents(id);
}
public void setEnabled(boolean enabled) {
ta.setEnabled(enabled);
}
/**
* @see com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.Widget#onLoad()
*/
protected void onLoad() {
super.onLoad();
DeferredCommand.addCommand(new Command() {
public void execute() {
setWidth("100%");
setTextAreaToTinyMCE(id);
focusMCE(id);
}
});
}
/**
* focusMCE() -
*
* Use this to set the focus to the MCE area
* @param id - the element's ID
*/
protected native void focusMCE(String id) /*-{
$wnd.tinyMCE.execCommand('mceFocus', true, id);
}-*/;
/**
* resetMCE() -
*
* Use this if reusing the same MCE element, but losing focus
*/
public native void resetMCE() /*-{
$wnd.tinyMCE.execCommand('mceResetDesignMode', true);
}-*/;
/**
* unload() -
*
* Unload this MCE editor instance from active memory.
* I use this in the onHide function of the containing widget. This helps
* to avoid problems, especially when using tabs.
*/
public void unload() {
unloadMCE(id);
}
/**
* unloadMCE() -
*
* @param id - The element's ID
* JSNI method to implement unloading the MCE editor instance from memory
*/
protected native void unloadMCE(String id) /*-{
$wnd.tinyMCE.execCommand('mceFocus', false, id);
$wnd.tinyMCE.execCommand('mceRemoveControl', false, id);
}-*/;
/**
* updateContent() -
*
* Update the internal referenced content. Use this if you programatically change
* the original text area's content (eg. do a clear)
* @param id - the ID of the text area that contains the content you wish to copy
*/
protected native void updateContent(String id) /*-{
$wnd.tinyMCE.activeEditor = $wnd.tinyMCE.get(id);
$wnd.tinyMCE.activeEditor.setContent($wnd.document.getElementById(id).value);
}-*/;
/**
* getTextArea() -
*
*/
protected native void getTextData(String id) /*-{
$wnd.tinyMCE.activeEditor = $wnd.tinyMCE.get(id);
$wnd.tinyMCE.activeEditor.save();
$wnd.tinyMCE.triggerSave();
}-*/;
/**
* encodeURIComponent() -
*
* Wrapper for the native URL encoding methods
* @param text - the text to encode
* @return the encoded text
*/
protected native String encodeURIComponent(String text) /*-{
return encodeURIComponent(text);
}-*/;
/**
* setTextAreaToTinyMCE() -
*
* Change a text area to a tiny MCE editing field
* @param id - the text area's ID
*/
protected native void setTextAreaToTinyMCE(String id) /*-{
$wnd.tinyMCE.execCommand('mceAddControl', true, id);
}-*/;
/**
* removeMCE() -
*
* Remove a tiny MCE editing field from a text area
* @param id - the text area's ID
*/
public native void removeMCE(String id) /*-{
$wnd.tinyMCE.execCommand('mceRemoveControl', true, id);
}-*/;
}
Remember to init TinyMCE in your html file, something like (the key setting is mode : "textareas"
, the rest should be safe to change):
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/tiny_mce/tiny_mce.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
tinyMCE.init({
theme : "advanced",
skin : "default",
mode : "textareas",
plugins : "bbcode",
theme_advanced_buttons1 : "bold,italic,strikethrough,separator,justifyleft,justifycenter,justifyright,justifyfull,separator,bullist,numlist,separator,sup,sub,|,undo,redo,separator,cut,copy,paste,|,fontsizeselect,forecolor,backcolor",
theme_advanced_buttons2 : "blockquote,link,unlink,image,styleselect,removeformat,|,charmap,code",
theme_advanced_buttons3 : "",
theme_advanced_toolbar_location : "bottom",
theme_advanced_toolbar_align : "center",
theme_advanced_styles : "Code=codeStyle;Quote=quoteStyle;PHP Code=phpCodeStyle",
entity_encoding : "raw",
add_unload_trigger : false,
remove_linebreaks : false,
button_tile_map : true
});
</script>
You can also try some other wrappers like http://www.ohloh.net/p/tinymce-gwt