Boy am I diggin’ AngularJS. There are so many cool bits to it. And the bits that don’t exist are fun to build…once you get the hang of it that is. Case in point, a nifty little wizard module. We here at RealCrowd use wizards on a few pages in our app. They are a nice mechanism to guide users thru multi-step or complex tasks. Translating a complex UI component into an AngularJS module can be a bit tricky. But because of the modular approach we’ve taken to development, we were able to develop a fairly robust implementation. For those more interested in code than an dissertation, here is a shortcut to our Github.

I personally have been known to re-invent the wheel from time to time, but when I find a good simple plug-in I like to use it. RealCrowd is also a fan of responsive design and use Twitter Bootstrap. We therefore choose to use the unofficial third-party Bootstrap Wizard Plug-in to base our angular module on. However, the current version was designed for Bootstrap version 2.3.2 and we use version 3.0.0. There needed to be some slight modifications for this to work with 3.0.0. We have forked the current plug-in here with a fix and have also submitted a pull request to the source branch (Update: The fix has now been merged into the source branch).

As with most projects, things seem relatively simple when looking at the high-level view. We just need a directive to apply our wizard plug-in. However, when we consider the nuances of the UI, things get a bit more complex. What about the backward and forward buttons? We want to hide the backward at sometimes and the forward at others. What if we want to validate at each step? What if we want to call a web-service and not move forward until completed? And what if you want to do all these things and not have a bomb or spaghetti code go off? Well lucky for you that bomb already went off for us, so we went back and cleaned-up the mess and came up with what we believe is a nice flexible, straight-forward approach.

Before we get into building this module, it is recommended you have a basic understanding of AngularJS and directives. Things can get a bit technical, but if you understand the basics it should be pretty informative. Now let’s start with some mark-up to define our wizard. The Bootstrap Wizard Plug-in utilizes the official Bootstrap JQuery Tab plug-in, so we just have to include the Bootstrap stylesheets and javascript (note: We are using Bootstrap v3.0.0 which is quite different from the old v.2.3.2. If not using v3.0.0, you’ll have to do a bit of work to translate this):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 <div ng-app="SampleWizardApp" ng-controller="SampleWizardController"> <ul class="nav nav-pills"> <li class="active"> <a class="active" href="#first" data-toggle="tab"> <span class="badge">1</span> <span>First Step</span> </a> </li> <li> <a href="#second" data-toggle="tab"> <span class="badge">2</span> <span>Second Step</span> </a> </li> <li> <a href="#last" data-toggle="tab"> <span class="badge">3</span> <span>Last Step</span> </a> </li> </ul> <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane active" id="first"> <h2>Enter first step data</h2> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">First Name</label> <input name="firstName" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.firstName" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">Last Name</label> <input name="lastName" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.lastName" /> </div> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="second"> <h2>Enter second step data</h2> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">Street Address</label> <input name="streetAddress" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.streetAddress" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">City</label> <input name="city" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.city" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">State</label> <input name="state" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.state" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">City</label> <input name="postalCode" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.postalCode" /> </div> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="last"> <h2>Finish last step</h2> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">First Name:</label> <p class="form-control-static">{{ user.firstName }}</p> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">Last Name:</label> <p class="form-control-static">{{ user.lastName }}</p> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">Address:</label> <p class="form-control-static"> {{ user.streetAddress }} <br /> {{ user.city }}, {{ user.state }} {{ user.postalCode }} </p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="form-group"> <div class="pull-right"> <a class="btn btn-default">Back</a> <a class="btn btn-primary">Continue</a> </div> </div> </div>

So we basically are starting out with an ordinary tab layout with some buttons at the bottom. To be clear, all of the style classes used are from Bootstrap. When we use custom styling we will prefix our CSS classes with an ‘ rc- ‘. Because of Bootstrap’s many styling options, our tab control already looks more wizard-y than tab-y. Thanks Bootstrap! Next we need to start our wizard directive to wizard-ify the tabs’ behavior. In our directive we will need a controller to wrap the basic wizard features and track some state. We want to make the state available so we will make the controller available on the scope. This is similar to what we do for the rcSubmit controller (which we describe the ‘why’ and ‘how’ in Advanced AngularJS Form Validation). The start of our wizard looks something like this (A quick note on naming convention for those new to the blog; all our constructs are prefixed with ‘rc’ for ‘RealCrowd’. We use this as a namespace, the same way AngularJS uses ‘ng’):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 var rcWizardDirective = { 'rcWizard' : function ( ) { return { restrict : 'A' , controller : [ '$scope' , function ( $scope ) { var self ; var wizardElement ; var wizardOptions = { } ; this . currentIndex = 0 ; this . firstIndex = 0 ; this . navigationLength = 0 ; this . forward = function ( ) { self. onForward ( ) ; } ; var onForward = function ( ) { wizardElement. bootstrapWizard ( 'next' ) ; } ; this . backward = function ( ) { wizardElement. bootstrapWizard ( 'previous' ) ; } ; var onTabChange = function ( activeTab , navigation , currentIndex , nextTab ) { self. currentIndex = nextTab ; self. firstIndex = wizardElement. bootstrapWizard ( 'firstIndex' ) ; self. navigationLength = wizardElement. bootstrapWizard ( 'navigationLength' ) ; if ( ! $scope.$$phase ) $scope.$apply ( ) ; } ; var onTabClick = function ( activeTab , navigation , currentIndex , clickedIndex ) { return false ; } ; var onTabShow = function ( activeTab , navigation , currentIndex ) { if ( currentIndex > 0 ) { wizardElement . find ( '.nav li:gt(' + ( currentIndex - 1 ) + ')' ) . removeClass ( "success" ) ; wizardElement . find ( '.nav li:lt(' + currentIndex + ')' ) . addClass ( "success" ) ; } else { wizardElement . find ( '.nav li' ) . removeClass ( "success" ) ; } } ; var updateWizard = function ( options ) { wizardOptions = options ; if ( wizardElement ) { wizardElement. bootstrapWizard ( options ) ; self. currentIndex = wizardElement. bootstrapWizard ( 'currentIndex' ) ; self. firstIndex = wizardElement. bootstrapWizard ( 'firstIndex' ) ; self. navigationLength = wizardElement. bootstrapWizard ( 'navigationLength' ) ; if ( ! $scope.$$phase ) $scope.$apply ( ) ; } } ; this . setWizardElement = function ( element ) { wizardElement = element ; self = this ; updateWizard ( { 'onTabChange' : onTabChange , 'onTabShow' : onTabShow , 'onTabClick' : onTabClick } ) ; } ; } ] , compile : function ( cElement , cAttributes , transclude ) { return { pre : function ( scope , formElement , attributes , wizardController ) { // put a reference to the wizardcontroller on the scope so we can use some of the // properties in the markup scope. rc = scope. rc || { } ; scope. rc [ attributes. rcWizard ] = wizardController ; } , post : function ( scope , element , attributes , wizardController ) { // let the controller know about the element wizardController. setWizardElement ( element ) ; if ( ! scope.$$phase ) scope.$apply ( ) ; } } ; } } } } ;

As you can see we are just applying and configuring the Bootstrap Wizard plug-in to the element and wrapping some of its functionality (namely the ‘ forward ‘ and ‘ backward ‘ methods). The forward method is double-wrapped. This will be helpful later on. We also are providing access to some state (i.e. currentIndex , firstIndex , navigationLength ) that will also be useful. You may notice we added a handler for the onTabClick events and return false . This is so the user can’t use the tab headings (now step headings) to navigate. Another handler we are using is onTabShow . We do this to add/remove a success CSS style class where appropriate which will allow us do some additional styling (Note: ‘ success ‘ is a contextual CSS class in Bootstrap). Now we just need to add a couple items to our markup to take advantage of our new directive (also don’t forget the reference to the Bootstrap Wizard plug-in):

1 2 3 <div ng-app="SampleWizardApp" ng-controller="SampleWizardController" rc-wizard="sampleWizard"> <ul class="nav nav-pills">

…

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 <div class="form-group"> <div class="pull-right"> <a class="btn btn-default" ng-click="rc.sampleWizard.backward()" ng-hide="rc.sampleWizard.currentIndex > rc.sampleWizard.firstIndex">Back</a> <a class="btn btn-primary" ng-click="rc.sampleWizard.forward()" ng-show="rc.sampleWizard.currentIndex < rc.sampleWizard.navigationLength"> Continue </a> </div> </div> </div>

Now our wizard is behaving more like a proper wizard. The ‘Back’ and ‘Continue’ buttons not only work, they also hide themselves when they aren’t needed. This is the point where most blogs would probably leave you: with a simple directive that does basically what you want it to do. But that is always annoying because when you go to implement it there are all these practical requirements missing. In the case of this wizard, a big missing piece is validation.

Wizard validation is a bit tricky. At first it may seem easy: just place a form around the wizard and handle it like any other form. However, in a wizard, you don’t want to just validate the wizard as a whole, you want to validate it per step. And until a step is valid you want to prevent navigation to the next step. Luckily we have some experience with form validation and disabling UI while busy that will come in handy here. We will be able to use the rcSubmit controller to tap into the validation process, namely onSubmitComplete . Since we need to validate on each step there will be a rcSubmit controller for every step. In order for our rcWizard controller to be able to handle that, we need to provide a way to track every step:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 var rcWizardDirective = { 'rcWizard' : function ( ) { return { restrict : 'A' , controller : [ '$scope' , function ( $scope ) { var self ; var wizardElement ; var wizardOptions = { } ; var steps = [ ] ; this . currentIndex = 0 ; this . firstIndex = 0 ; this . navigationLength = 0 ; this . addStep = function ( step ) { steps. push ( step ) ; if ( ! step. element || ! step. submitController ) return ; // if a rcSubmitController is being used, automatically add a _hidden_ // submit button so that // in order to place an submit button that is still functional it // has to technically be visible, so instead when place it way off // screen jQuery ( step. element ) . append ( '<input type="submit" tabindex="-1"' + 'style="position: absolute; left: -9999px; width: 1px; height: 1px;" />' ) . attr ( 'action' , 'javascript:void(0);' ) ; // bind to the submit complete event on the rcSubmitController and // if the action was successful, trigger a next on the wizard. step. submitController . onSubmitComplete ( function ( evt ) { if ( evt. success ) { self. onForward ( step ) ; } } ) ; } ; this . forward = function ( ) { var currentStep = ( steps. length > self. currentIndex ) ? steps [ self. currentIndex ] : null ; if ( ! currentStep ) return ; if ( currentStep. submitController ) { currentStep. submitController . submit ( ) ; } else { self. onForward ( currentStep ) ; } } ; var onForward = function ( currentStep ) { if ( currentStep. formController && currentStep. formController .$invalid ) return ; wizardElement. bootstrapWizard ( 'next' ) ; } ;

…

The addStep method takes in a ‘ step ‘ object that has useful information such as the step ‘s element and its rcSubmit controller if it has one. Using this information we can tap into that step ‘s submit logic using onSubmitComplete . Using that, we can now base moving forward in the wizard on the successful completion of a form submission. We can also do some other nifty things to make a better user experience. For instance, if these steps are represented by forms, when can automatically add a hidden submit input so that submit-on-enter behavior works. You’ll note this code is designed to work with or without the rcSubmit controller. We try not to require additional modules unless their functionality is being used.

The rcWizard controller now has methods to properly track our enhanced steps. Next we need code that actually adds the steps to the rcWizard ‘s controller. This will involve another new directive, ‘ rcStep ‘:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 var rcWizardStepDirective = { 'rcStep' : function ( ) { return { restrict : 'A' , require : [ '^rcWizard' , '?form' , '?rcSubmit' ] , link : function ( scope , element , attributes , controllers ) { var wizardController = controllers [ 0 ] ; // find all the optional controllers for the step var formController = controllers. length > 1 ? controllers [ 1 ] : null ; var submitController = controllers. length > 2 ? controllers [ 2 ] : null ; // add the step to the wizard controller var step = wizardController. addStep ( { 'element' : element , 'attributes' : attributes , 'formController' : formController , 'submitController' : submitController } ) ; } } ; } } ;

This directive is simple enough. It merely calls the addStep method on the rcWizard controller including the element, and the optional ngFormController and rcSubmit controller. These are optional because they are not always necessary for a basic wizard to function.

That’s enough javascript coding. We now need to update the markup to take advantage of our new functionality:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 <div ng-app="SampleWizardApp" ng-controller="SampleWizardController" rc-wizard="sampleWizard"> <ul class="nav nav-pills"> <li class="active"> <a class="active" href="#first" data-toggle="tab"> <span>1</span> <span>First Step</span> </a> </li>

…

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 <div class="tab-content"> <form class="tab-pane active" id="first" name="firstForm" novalidate rc-submit rc-step> <h2>Enter first step data</h2> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">First Name</label> <input name="firstName" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.firstName" required /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">Last Name</label> <input name="lastName" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.lastName" required /> </div> </form> <form class="tab-pane" id="second" name="secondForm" novalidate rc-submit rc-step> <h2>Enter second step data</h2> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">Street Address</label> <input name="streetAddress" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.streetAddress" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">City</label> <input name="city" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.city" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">State</label> <input name="state" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.state" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">City</label> <input name="postalCode" class="form-control" type="text" ng-model="user.postalCode" /> </div> </form> <form class="tab-pane" id="last" name="lastForm" novalidate rc-submit rc-step> <h2>Finish last step</h2> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">First Name:</label> <p class="form-control-static">{{ user.firstName }}</p> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">Last Name:</label> <p class="form-control-static">{{ user.lastName }}</p> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">Address:</label> <p class="form-control-static"> {{ user.streetAddress }} <br /> {{ user.city }}, {{ user.state }} {{ user.postalCode }} </p> </div> </form> </div>

…

All we did was convert all the tab-pane’s from div elements to form elements. We added our rcSubmit and rcStep directives as well. Now each step functions as its own validating form. In the first step we added some required attributes. Now if we attempt to continue to the next step it will not let us move forward until we fill out those fields.

This is all great and does exactly what we want to do. But since we are building based on some pretty cool directives, we can easily add some very helpful features. First, we can use our submission attempt tracking from this blog to highlight error’d fields when the user attempts to move forward too soon. Second, if we have a service call between steps that we need to wait for before moving forward and we want to disable the UI while we do so, we have rcDisabled from this blog. Using all these together we along with a little custom styling (i.e the rc-nav-wizard CSS class), we have an uber-wizard:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 <div ng-controller="SampleWizardController" rc-wizard="sampleWizard" rc-disabled="rc.firstForm.submitInProgress"> <ul class="nav rc-nav-wizard"> <li class="active"> <a class="active" href="#first" data-toggle="tab"> <span class="badge">1</span> <span>First Step</span> </a> </li> <li> <a href="#second" data-toggle="tab"> <span class="badge">2</span> <span>Second Step</span> </a> </li> <li> <a href="#last" data-toggle="tab"> <span class="badge">3</span> <span>Last Step</span> </a> </li> </ul> <div class="tab-content"> <form class="tab-pane active" id="first" name="firstForm" rc-submit="saveState()" rc-step novalidate> <h2>Enter first step data</h2> <div class="form-group" ng-class="{'has-error': rc.firstForm.needsAttention(firstForm.firstName)}"> <label class="control-label">First Name</label> <input name="firstName" class="form-control" type="text" required ng-model="user.firstName"/> </div> <div class="form-group" ng-class="{'has-error': rc.firstForm.needsAttention(firstForm.lastName)}"> <label class="control-label">Last Name</label> <input name="lastName" class="form-control" type="text" required ng-model="user.lastName" /> </div> </form>

…

And there you have it. A nice little wizard module. This is also a great example of how building modular components can really boost future development. As usual, we’ve made a Plunker and the source and examples are available on our Github. (Please note, all solutions presented in this post are based on AngularJS 1.0.8 and Bootstrap 3.0.0)