@mapbox/link-hijacker

Hijack clicks on and within links, probably for client-side routing

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@mapbox/link-hijacker
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Hijack clicks on and within links, probably for client-side routing.
Pirates hijacking a ship
Imagine you're using client-side routing on your website, because you live in The Future. You want nice, smooth, fast client-side routing whenever a link points to a client-side route (regardless of whether the code author remembered this). And you want a regular old page transition whenever a link does not point to a client-side route. The easiest way to do this would be to use regular <a> elements all over your site, for both of these types of links. That would be convenient, and also wouldn't force you or others to pay attention to which links should do client-side routing and which ones should not. That seems like a better situation than, for example, using a special component to distinguish between regular and client-side links.
link-hijacker provides the means to do this by hijacking all clicks on and within links, allowing you to determine how they are treated.
  • Listens for clicks.
  • Determines which clicks are on or within <a> elements with href attributes.
  • Determines whether those links should be hijacked, based on your options.
  • If a link should be hijacked, prevents default behavior and calls your callback.
  • In your callback, you might programmatically change pages.

This pattern has been implemented before, because it's clearly useful (see "Similar work"). But there didn't seem to be a full-featured, well-tested, and actively maintained implementation that was not tied to a larger library. So we made this one.

Typical example

const linkHijacker = require('@mapbox/link-hijacker');

const unhijack = linkHijacker.hijack((clickedLink, clickEvent) => {
  // Determine whether the link points to a client-side route ...
  if (linkPointsToClientSideRoute) {
    // Use JS for to programmatically change the page ...
  } else {
    // Or else allow it to work like a regular link.
    window.location.assign(clickedLink);
  }
});

// Later, you can unhijack links.
unhijack();

You can now use <a> elements indiscriminately.

API

hijack

linkHijacker.hijack([options], callback)
Returns a function that can be used to remove event listeners, unhijacking links. Calls the callback whenever a link is hijacked.

options

root
Type: HtmlElement. Default: document.documentElement.
Links will be hijacked within this element.
skipModifierKeys
Type: boolean. Default: true.
By default, clicks paired with modifiers keys (ctrlKey, altKey, metaKey, shiftKey) are not hijacked. If this option is false, these clicks will be hijacked.
skipDownload
Type: boolean. Default: true.
By default, links with the download attribute are not hijacked. If this option is false, these links will be hijacked.
skipTargetBlank
Type: boolean. Default: true.
By default, links with the attribute target="_blank" are not hijacked. If this option is false, these links will be hijacked.
skipExternal
Type: boolean. Default: true.
By default, links with the attribute rel="external" are not hijacked. If this option is false, these links will be hijacked.
skipMailTo
Type: boolean. Default: true.
By default, links whose href attributes start with mailto: are not hijacked. If this option is false, these links will be hijacked.
skipOtherOrigin
Type: boolean. Default: true.
By default, links pointing to other origins (protocol + domain) are not hijacked. If this option is false, these links will be hijacked.
skipFragment
Type: boolean. Default: true.
By default, links with href attributes starting with fragments (e.g. href="#foo") are not hijacked. (Links with href attributes that include fragments, but don't start with them, will still be hijacked, e.g. href="some/page#foo".) If this option is false, these links will be hijacked.
skipFilter
Type: Function.
A filter function that receives the clicked link element and returns a truthy or falsey value indicating whether the link should be hijacked or not. If it returns a falsey value, the link will be hijacked. If the function returns a truthy value, the link will not be hijacked.
preventDefault
Type: boolean. Default: true.
By default, event.preventDefault() will be called on any click events that are hijacked (are not skipped). If this option is false, event.preventDefault() will not be called. You could let the event continue as normal, or prevent default behavior yourself.

callback

Type: Function. Required.
Whenever a link is clicked, the callback will be invoked with two arguments:
  • link: The link element that was clicked on or within.
  • event: The click event.

Similar work