Quick-n-Dirty: How to add HTML 5 events

One way for adding unsupported events to an XPage or a component is the trick from Keith. But this is limited to CSJS only. If you need to execute a server side event, you just need change the name of the event to a new HTML 5 event name which does not exist in the DDE.

Here is an example for the new onSearch event:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xp:view xmlns:xp="http://www.ibm.com/xsp/core">

    <xp:inputText id="inputTextSearch" type="search">
        <xp:eventHandler event="onsearch" submit="true"
            refreshMode="partial" refreshId="labelSearchFor">
            <xp:this.action>
               <![CDATA[#{javascript:print("onSearch");}]]>
            </xp:this.action>
        </xp:eventHandler>
    </xp:inputText>

    <xp:br />
    <xp:br />

    <xp:label id="labelSearchFor">
        <xp:this.value>
           <![CDATA[#{javascript:getComponent("inputTextSearch").value}]]>
        </xp:this.value>
    </xp:label>

</xp:view>

After entering a value and hitting enter…

… you can see on the server console that the event occurred:

This technique allows to add new events to the whole XPage, for example the onContextMenu event:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xp:view xmlns:xp="http://www.ibm.com/xsp/core">

        <xp:eventHandler event="oncontextmenu" submit="true"
            refreshMode="norefresh">
            <xp:this.action>
                <![CDATA[#{javascript:print("onContextMenu");}]]>
            </xp:this.action>
        </xp:eventHandler>

</xp:view>

Every time if the user opens the context menu in the browser, the event is triggered and executed on the server:

The name of the event must be lowercased. A list of HTML 5 events can be found here: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/html5/html5_events.htm. Not all browsers support every HTML 5 event in the list.

P.S. Keep in mind that this article has been posted in the “Quick-n-Dirty” category.