Building Stretching to the bottom Layout With Flex-Box

Layout

Everybody knows that to build the layout is complicate thing, especially when we talking about layout which should stretch to page bottom. In other words - with footer sticking to page bottom.

I'm sure there is a lot of ways around how to build this layout, but in this article i will try to show how to build it using flex-box CSS3 feature

Dividing to sections

First lets decide to how to divide our layouts to sections:
I decided that two main sections will be displayed one besides other like to columns - nav and main elements
Inside main element will be 3 other sections positioned one above the other:header,article and footer

    <div class="wrap">
      <nav>
        <ul>
          <li><a href>1 link</a></li>
          <li><a href>2 link</a></li>
          <li><a href>3 link</a></li>
        </ul>
      </nav>
      <main>
         <header>Hello Plunker!</header>
         <article>
           HellHePlunkllo Plunker! Plunk
           Hello Plunker!Hello P Plunk
           lunker Plunk!o PHello Plunker Plunk
           !lunker! Hello Plunker! Plunk
         </article>
         <footer>footer</footer>
      </main>
    </div>

VH Trick

One css feature i found very useful is VH unit. This vh represents percents of view height (e.g. browser window height) ,and thus given some element height set to 100vh makes it to stretch over the whole window from its top to its bottom

.wrap{/* root container */
  height:100vh;
  background:green;
  display:flex;
}

Nav & Main sections flow

Since we want those sections to be stick one near other (like two cells in the row) all we have to do is set the display property of their container to flex
By default flex-direction property is "row"
Since nav section has fixed width of 234px - all that left to do is to make the main section to catch all the remaining space:

nav{
  width:234px;
  background:orange;
}
main{
  flex:1   100%;/*will make it stretch over remaining space*/
}

Header Article and Footer

First thing is to set flow of main container to be column

main{
  display:flex;
  flex:1   100%;
  flex-direction:column;
}

Now the only thing left is to arrange the header above the article and make article to catch all available space between header and footer.

article{
  flex:1   100%;
  background:red;
}

See this plunker for running code

Building Drop Down Menu Using Angular1 Component

Challenge

To build drop down menu like angular-ui-bootstrap with angularjs using "component":

Behaviors

1. Menu toggle button Should open hidden menu when clicked, and to hide the menu if it open
2. Menu Should Close itself when users clicks on some other place
3. If disabled - should not show anything when clicked

Step 1 - CSS & HTML

For sake of simplicity i will copied styles from bootstrap framework:

.open > .dropdown-menu {
    display: block;
}
.dropdown-menu {
    position: absolute;
    top: 100%;
    left: 0;
    z-index: 1000;
    display: none;
    float: left;
    min-width: 160px;
    padding: 5px 0;
    margin: 2px 0 0;
    font-size: 14px;
    text-align: left;
    list-style: none;
    background-color: #fff;
    -webkit-background-clip: padding-box;
    background-clip: padding-box;
    border: 1px solid #ccc;
    border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, .15);
    border-radius: 4px;
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0 6px 12px rgba(0, 0, 0, .175);
    box-shadow: 0 6px 12px rgba(0, 0, 0, .175);
}

and the html will be following:

    <dropdown>
        <dropdown-toggle>
        <a href="">Dropdown <span class="caret"></span>
        </a>
        </dropdown-toggle>
        <dropdown-menu>
        <li>
            <a href="" ng-click="$ctrl.sayHi()">Action</a>
        </li>
        <li>
            <a href="">Another action</a>
        </li>
        <li>
            <a href="">Something else here</a>
        </li>
        <li role="separator" class="divider"></li>
        <li>
            <a href="">Separated link</a>
        </li>
        </dropdown-menu>
    </dropdown>

inside 'dropdown-toggle' container user should be able to place html of 'a' tag or button (according to his needs)
inside 'dropdown-menu' container user should be able to place html of menu items - there he should be able to attach methods from controller - like sayHi

dividing to components

I decided to divide this component to three different components:
The dropdown Parent component and dropdownToggle and dropdownMenu child components
That way logic will be splitted to its specific component

dropdown component

Should contain close and open methods

angular.module('drop',[])
.component('dropdown',{ 
  controller:function($element,$document) {
    $element.addClass('dropdown');//
    this.close=() => {
      $element.removeClass('open');
      this.isOpen = false;
    }
    this.open=() => {
      $element.addClass('open');
      this.isOpen = true;
    }    
  }
})

The mechanic here is that menu is visible when the main container (dropdown element) have "dropdown" and "open" classes, that why close and open are adding and removing 'open' classes accordingly

dropdownToggle component

Is the element that must handle the clicks and activate its parent 'open' and 'close' methods;
For be able to access its parent methods i'm using require option inside component definition:

.component('dropdownToggle',{
  require: {//<--USING REQUIRE OPTION
    parent: '^^dropdown' 
  },
  controller:function($element) {
    $element.addClass('dropdown-toggle');
    
    $element.on('click',($event)=>{
       this.parent.isOpen ? this.parent.close() : this.parent.open();
    })     
  }
})

click outside behavior

For be able to close the menu when user clicks somewhere else on the screen i'm taking advantage of $document service:
dropdown.js

 ...
  $document.on('click',(evt)=>{
    if(!$element.find('dropdown-toggle')[0].contains(evt.target)){
      this.close() 
    }
  })
...

You can see running code on this punker

Lazy loading - Is it possible in Angular1

What Is Lazy Loading?

Single page application, as you can see from its name - is built with one single page. In this single page javascript loads (when needed) various views. Each view may have its won modules, components, and other javascript logic inside them. Since it may happen that site user will not access some views at all - it is good practice to avoid load then every time the app accessed, istead - the ideal tactic is to load those javascript parts only when this specific view was called. But is there some way to do it in angular1?

The Answer is Yes

Actually there is a way to implement lazy loading with angularjs, for example by using ocLazyLoad angular module. You can read here how to load entire module or only some directive or service or how to load some state from a script!

Experiment

As usual lets show how to use lazy loading on some of our old good projects - the angular phonecat.
Lets start with download or clone the project to some local directory.

git clone https://github.com/angular/angular-phonecat.git

After installing dependencies (npm i) lets register the ocLazyLoad module to bower.json:

bower i oclazyload -D

After install and place reference on index.html file, we must register lazy load module in root application module:

'use strict';

// Define the `phonecatApp` module
angular.module('phonecatApp', [
  'ngAnimate',
  'ngRoute',
  'core',
  'phoneDetail',
  'phoneList',
  'oc.lazyLoad'
]);

Create About Page

For testing lazy load feature lets create "about" module which will contain "component","config","module" and "template" files

we will rester only "config" and "module" references on the index.html
Lets add about module to our root "phonecatApp" module:

angular.module('phonecatApp', [
  'ngAnimate',
  'ngRoute',
  'core',
  'phoneDetail',
  'phoneList',
  'oc.lazyLoad',
  'about' 
]);

We didn't put the reference to about.component fie on the index.html on the purpose.
The "component" file will load with lazy load module after user will access "about" route.

angular.module('about').
    config(['$locationProvider', '$routeProvider',
        function config($locationProvider, $routeProvider) {
            $routeProvider.
                when('/about', {
                    template: '<about-comp></about-comp>',
                    resolve: ['$ocLazyLoad', function ($ocLazyLoad) {
                        return $ocLazyLoad.load([{
                            files: ['about/about.component.js']
                        }])
                    }]
                });
        }
    ]);

Lets try to navigate to /about url
Wow! Now you can see the about component is loaded!
Thanks for reading