Simplest way to detect a pinch

Question

This is a WEB APP not a native app. Please no Objective-C NS commands.

So I need to detect 'pinch' events on iOS. Problem is every plugin or method I see for doing gestures or multi-touch events, is (usually) with jQuery and is a whole additional pluggin for every gesture under the sun. My application is huge, and I am very sensitive to deadwood in my code. All I need is to detect a pinch, and using something like jGesture is just way to bloated for my simple needs.

Additionally, I have a limited understanding of how to detect a pinch manually. I can get the position of both fingers, can't seem to get the mix right to detect this. Does anyone have a simple snippet that JUST detects pinch?

Answer 1

Think about what a pinch event is: two fingers on an element, moving toward or away from each other. Gesture events are, to my knowledge, a fairly new standard, so probably the safest way to go about this is to use touch events like so:

(ontouchstart event)

if (e.touches.length === 2) {
    scaling = true;
    pinchStart(e);
}

(ontouchmove event)

if (scaling) {
    pinchMove(e);
}

(ontouchend event)

if (scaling) {
    pinchEnd(e);
    scaling = false;
}

To get the distance between the two fingers, use the hypot function:

var dist = Math.hypot(
    e.touches[0].pageX - e.touches[1].pageX,
    e.touches[0].pageY - e.touches[1].pageY);