Adding links to the poem

We have the text of the poem appearing inside #poem, but it’s “plain” text–it has no markup or <a> tags. How can we tell jQuery to wrap the place names in tags? Start with just one example, “Hastings Street”:

$.ajax({
  url: "https://the-javascripting-english-major.org/examples/markdown/poem.md",
  success: function(poem){
    let html;
    html = md.render(poem);
    $("#poem").html(html);
    // The above is the same as the $.ajax() call in the prev. ch.
    $("#poem").html(function(_, oldHtml){
      let newHtml;
      newHtml = oldHtml.replace(/Hastings Street/g, "<a href='#' data-place='hastings-street'>Hastings Street</a>");
      return newHtml;
    });
  }
});

Those added five lines are doing quite a bit, so I’ll walk through them step-by-step:

1. $("#poem"): Select #poem.
2. .html(: Use the .html() method on the selected content. Recall that .html() by itself gets the HTML. .html("string") sets the HTML. Now we see that .html(function()) manipulates the HTML.
3. .function(_, oldHtml){: The anonymous function inside the .html() method inherits two variables, an index value I am calling _, and the “old” HTML, which I am calling oldHtml. I won’t use _. I’m only interested in oldHtml.
4. Define a newHtml variable and assign it to the result of:
5. oldHtml.replace(: Strings have a .replace() method, that lets us replace part of the string with a new string.
6. /Hastings Street/g,: A regular expression (more below) that basically means “every instance of ‘Hastings Street.’”
7. "<a href='#' data-tab='hastings-street'>Hastings Street</a>": The replacement string. Notice the addition of a data-tab attribute I’ll be using later.
8. return: Return the result of newHtml.

Everything here should familiar to you, except for that regular expression. Regular expressions are ways of matching string patterns that are common in programming languages. The syntax is complex, but, as a result, “regexes” are extremely powerful.¹ For the sake of this course, you only need to know that:

1. Regular expressions are bounded by / on each side.
2. A g at the end of a regex means to match every occurrence of the pattern.
3. To use a variable in a regex, you have to define and assign the regex, as we’ll see below.

The code as it is works perfectly for “Hastings Street,” but, of course, we have five places. Let’s create an array that we can loop over, then:

  let placesArray;
  placesArray = [
    {text: "Hastings Street", tab: "hastings-street", html: "Hastings Street"},
    {text: "18th & Vine", tab: "eighteenth-and-vine", html: "18th & Vine"},

Wait a minute! This looks familiar. Didn’t we do this already back in Chapter 11? Yes, we did. That means we can use that couldBeFeatures array of Objects again here. And now the point of the .html property I added back then becomes clear; to create an “&“ in HTML, you have to type &.

The loop:

$.ajax({
  url: "https://the-javascripting-english-major.org/examples/markdown/poem.md",
  success: function(poem){
    // Read in the poem.
    let html;
    // Use the Markdown-it renderer I defined last chapter.
    html = md.render(poem);
    $("#poem").html(html);
    // Once the poem is in, start the loop.
    couldBeFeatures.forEach(function(feature){
      $("#poem").html(function(_, oldHtml){
        let regex, newHtml;
        // Assign the the regex the value of feature.html and the 
        // flag “g”. This is the equivalent to /Hastings Street/g.
        regex = RegExp(feature.html, "g");
        // Fill in newHtml with the properties from the couldBeFeatures.
        newHtml = "<a href='#' data-tab='" + feature.tab + "'>" + feature.html + "</a>";
        // Return the newHtml wherever `replace()` finds the value
        // of regex.
        return oldHtml.replace(regex, newHtml);
      });
    });
  }
});

Hopefully, this helps you see how looping over an array objects provides yet even more functionality.

Again, this is a slightly contrived example, and it depends on the fact that the place names are all unique in that the regular expressions only match the place names. If we had a place called “Could,” we’d be out of luck, because there would be no easy way to tell if “Could” referred to a place or was a regular word starting a line. Nevertheless, now you know how to manipulate HTML, in addition to getting and setting it. With the links on the page, though, we should make them do something.

Making the links respond to clicks

You already know about jQuery’s $("").click() method, so building the basics of making the links in the poem respond to clicks should be straightforward:

$("#poem a").click(function(){
  // Do something when you click.
});

The jQuery selector "#poem a" means “every instance of an <a> tag inside #poem. Any other <a> tags on the web page remain unaffected. As for doing something, there are two new methods to introduce here, one from Bootstrap, and one from Leaflet.

Using Bootstrap to reveal a tab

In Bootstrap, the .tab("show") method can show a tab. Getting the proper selector in jQuery is a bit trickier, but this works for the “Hastings Street” tab:

$("#nav-tabs a[href='#hastings-street']").tab("show");

The selector is telling jQuery to select the <a> tag within the entity with the id nav-tabs that has the href property of #hastings-street. So that works for Hastings Street, but what about for all the places? This is why I added the data-tab data attribute above. We can replace the code with:

$("#nav-tabs a[href='#" + $( this ).data("tab") + "']").tab("show");

Now whenever the user clicks on a link in the poem, the corresponding tab opens under the map.

Changing map state with a click

This one is a bit trickier, and to get it to work, we need to add two more data attributes for each <a> tag in #poem, a data-lat and a data-lng. Time to return to the loop above:

$.ajax({
  url: "https://the-javascripting-english-major.org/examples/markdown/poem.md",
  success: function(poem){
    // Read in the poem.
    let html;
    // Use the Markdown-it renderer I defined last chapter.
    html = md.render(poem);
    $("#poem").html(html);
    // Once the poem is in, start the loop.
    couldBeFeatures.forEach(function(feature){
      $("#poem").html(function(_, oldHtml){
        // Define two new variables, lat and lng.
        let regex, newHtml;
        // Assign the the regex the value of feature.html and the 
        // flag “g”. This is the equivalent to /Hastings Street/g.
        regex = RegExp(feature.html, "g");
        // Fill in newHtml with the properties from the couldBeFeatures.
        newHtml = "<a href='#' data-tab='" + 
          feature.tab + 
          "' data-lat='" +
          feature.latLng.lat +
          "' data-lng='" +
          feature.latLng.lng +
          "'>" + feature.html + "</a>";
        // Return the newHtml wherever `replace()` finds the value
        // of regex.
        return oldHtml.replace(regex, newHtml);
      });
    });
  }
});

Now there are three data attributes, and we can harvest the latitude and longitude for our $().click() callback:

$("#poem a").click(function(){
  let tab, lat, lng;
  tab = $( this ).data("tab");
  $("#nav-tabs a[href='#" + tab + "']").tab("show");
  lat = $( this ).data("lat");
  lng = $( this ).data("lng");
  map.panTo([lat, lng]);
});

That is certainly a mouthful, and despite how confusing this is, this is probably the easiest way to do this. The first draft of this chapter had a far more complex process, because I had not thought to create the couldBeFeatures array. Then the second draft was still confusing because I did not think to use data-lat and data-lng to get coordinates in the links. But programming is like that. There are many ways to get to the destination, and sometimes it takes time to figure out which is the most elegant.

Involved Leaflet popups

Back when I introduced Leaflet, you created a simple popup for a marker. Because the popups are <div>s in their own right, it is possible to put a lot of HTML inside of them. Here, we’ll make use of the other properties in the GeoJSON file to create a popup that displays the lines in which the place is mentioned and provides a link to the appropriate Wikipedia article. To do so, we create some HTML called popupContent and add that when defining the Leaflet markers. Adding the name and the link to Wikipedia is easy:

// This is from what I added to could-be.js back in Chapter 11
couldBeLayer = L.featureGroup(couldBeFeatures.map(function(feature){
  let popupContent;
  popupContent = "<h4>" + feature.name + "</h4>";
  popupContent = popupContent + "Read about " + feature.name + " on <a href='"+ feature.wikipedia + "'>Wikipedia</a>.";
  return L.marker(feature.latLng).bindPopup(popupContent);
  })
);

The .bindPopup() method takes a string of HTML for the marker’s popup. The lines are a bit more complex because sometimes a place is only mentioned on one line, and sometimes it’s mentioned on more than one:

couldBeLayer = L.featureGroup(couldBeFeatures.map(function(feature){
  let popupContent, lines;
  popupContent = "<h4>" + feature.name + "</h4>";
  if (feature.lines.length > 1){
    lines = "lines " + feature.lines.join(" and ");
  } else {
    lines = "line " + feature.lines[0];
  }
  popupContent = popupContent + feature.name + " is mentioned on " + lines + ".<br />";
  popupContent = popupContent + "Read about " + feature.name + " on <a href='"+ feature.wikipedia + "'>Wikipedia</a>.";
  return L.marker(feature.latLng).bindPopup(popupContent);
  });
);

Of course, if a place were mentioned three times, then we’d have something like “mentioned on lines 1 and 3 and 5.” It’d be possible to use regular expressions to turn that into “lines 1, 3, and 5,” but that can be extra credit, or something. But you can see that a lot of information can be crammed into a popup. It’d even be possible to use an $.ajax() call to load in a Markdown document!

While we’re working with popups, however, I’d like to sneak in one last change. I’d rather have the markers be tiny circles, and I’d like the circle to be larger if a place is mentioned more times. In addition to L.marker, Leaflet also offers L.circleMarker, which can take an option for a .radius property. And while we’re at it, let’s give the markers a fun color:

couldBeLayer = L.featureGroup(couldBeFeatures.map(function(feature){
  let popupContent, lines;
  popupContent = "<h4>" + feature.name + "</h4>";
  if (feature.lines.length > 1){
    lines = "lines " + feature.lines.join(" and ");
  } else {
    lines = "line " + feature.lines[0];
  }
  popupContent = popupContent + feature.name + " is mentioned on " + lines + ".<br />";
  popupContent = popupContent + "Read about " + feature.name + " on <a href='"+ feature.wikipedia + "'>Wikipedia</a>.";
  return L.circleMarker(feature.latLng, { 
    radius: 10 * feature.mentions, 
    color: "#d33682", 
    fillColor: "#d33682" 
    }).bindPopup(popupContent);
  });
);

The .radius property is multiplied by the .mentions property as defined in the GeoJSON document. This works, but is, incidentally, extremely bad design. A circle with a radius of 20 (10 × 2 mentions) is not twice the size of a circle of radius 10 (10 × 1 mention), because the areas of two circles are proportional to their radii squared. As a result, we’re better off if we multiply the radius by the square root of the mentions, if we want the circle to be twice as large. Easy enough. Just change the line that assigns the .radius property to:

radius: 10 * Math.sqrt(feature.mentions), 

How did you do that?

This chapter relied a lot on trial and error on my part to make sure everything worked correctly, so here I’ll mention two valuable suggestions for when you’re designing your own project.

First, any variable you define globally (not inside a function, for our purposes) in JavaScript is available in the JavaScript console. For example, if you look at the “Could Be” Project for the end of Chapter 14, and you open the console on that page, you can type:

> couldBeFeatures;
//--> [Object, Object, Object, Object, Object]

This tells you that couldBeFeatures is an array of Objects. Similarly, there’s probably a little disclosure triangle (▶) next to the array that you can click on that shows the properties for each object. On the other hand:

> map;
//--> e {options: Object, _container: <div id="could-be-map">, _leaflet_id: 2, _containerId: 3, _fadeAnimated: true, …}

Again, the disclosure triangle will open up the map Leaflet Object so you can see all of its properties. Sometimes it’s valuable to dig into those objects to find places where you can hook into the Object to add interactivity. Even non-global variables can be sent to the console using our old friend console.log(variable).

Second, when it comes to styling, it’s possible to drill down the disclosure triangles on the elements tab to see how, for example, popups are styled. If you click on one of the markers, so that its popup shows, you can see on the elements tab a tree of HTML like this:

<div id="could-be-map" …>
  <!-- Everything below is generated by Leaflet -->
  <div class="leaflet-pane leaflet-map-pane" …>
    <div class="leaflet-pane leaflet-tile-pane">…</div>
    <div class="leaflet-pane leaflet-shadow-pane"></div>
    <div class="leaflet-pane leaflet-overlay-pane">…</div>
    <div class="leaflet-pane leaflet-marker-pane"></div>
    <div class="leaflet-pane leaflet-tooltip-pane"></div>
    <div class="leaflet-pane leaflet-popup-pane">
      <div class="leaflet-popup leaflet-zoom-animated"…>
        <div class="leaflet-popup-content-wrapper">
          <div class="leaflet-popup-content">

The Leaflet panes are in descending order. The first pane (or layer) is the tiles. Then the shadows (for markers), then the overlay pane (where our circleMarkers are), then the marker pane, tooltip pane, and, finally, the popup pane. When a marker is clicked on, Leaflet creates the .leaflet-popup <div> and populates it with the popup’s contents. But as you can see, if you were to style .leaflet-popup-content in your .css file, you could, say, change the font of the popups, for example. Or give them a background color other than white. The popups are just HTML, meaning they react the same styles you define in your .css file as the rest of the page.

As a result, the answer to “How did you do that?” is not only usually “drilled down into the details,” but also “just like you can.” The details of the “Could Be” Project are visible to anyone who wants to look at them.

Exercises

1. Add interactivity between your page and your map in your project.
2. Create rich popups for your map.