Simple drag and drop code

Kayote picture Kayote · Aug 25, 2013 · Viewed 22.8k times · Source

Im struggling with seemingly a simple javascript exercise, writing a vanilla drag and drop. I think Im making a mistake with my 'addeventlisteners', here is the code:

var ele = document.getElementsByClassName ("target")[0];
var stateMouseDown = false;
//ele.onmousedown = eleMouseDown;
ele.addEventListener ("onmousedown" , eleMouseDown , false);

function eleMouseDown () {
    stateMouseDown = true;
    document.addEventListener ("onmousemove" , eleMouseMove , false);
}

function eleMouseMove (ev) {
    do {
        var pX = ev.pageX;
        var pY = ev.pageY;
        ele.style.left = pX + "px";
        ele.style.top = pY + "px";
        document.addEventListener ("onmouseup" , eleMouseUp , false);
    } while (stateMouseDown === true);
}

function eleMouseUp () {
    stateMouseDown = false;
    document.removeEventListener ("onmousemove" , eleMouseMove , false);
    document.removeEventListener ("onmouseup" , eleMouseUp , false);
}

Answer

iRector picture iRector · Aug 25, 2013

Here's a jsfiddle with it working: http://jsfiddle.net/fpb7j/1/

There were 2 main issues, first being the use of onmousedown, onmousemove and onmouseup. I believe those are only to be used with attached events:

document.body.attachEvent('onmousemove',drag);

while mousedown, mousemove and mouseup are for event listeners:

document.body.addEventListener('mousemove',drag);

The second issue was the do-while loop in the move event function. That function's being called every time the mouse moves a pixel, so the loop isn't needed:

var ele = document.getElementsByClassName ("target")[0];
ele.addEventListener ("mousedown" , eleMouseDown , false);

function eleMouseDown () {
    stateMouseDown = true;
    document.addEventListener ("mousemove" , eleMouseMove , false);
}

function eleMouseMove (ev) {
    var pX = ev.pageX;
    var pY = ev.pageY;
    ele.style.left = pX + "px";
    ele.style.top = pY + "px";
    document.addEventListener ("mouseup" , eleMouseUp , false);
}

function eleMouseUp () {
    document.removeEventListener ("mousemove" , eleMouseMove , false);
    document.removeEventListener ("mouseup" , eleMouseUp , false);
}

By the way, I had to make the target's position absolute for it to work.