Dynamic button javascript

javascript dynamic button

13,374

Solution 1

Something like this...?

<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      var arrayToModify = [];
      window.onload = function () {
        var i, buttonsToCreate, buttonContainer, newButton;
        buttonsToCreate = ['button1','button2','button3','button4','button5'];
        buttonContainer = document.getElementById('this_element_contains_my_buttons');
        for (i = 0; i < buttonsToCreate.length; i++) {
          newButton = document.createElement('input');
          newButton.type = 'button';
          newButton.value = buttonsToCreate[i];
          newButton.id = buttonsToCreate[i];
          newButton.onclick = function () {
            alert('You pressed '+this.id);
            arrayToModify[arrayToModify.length] = this.id;
          };
          buttonContainer.appendChild(newButton);
        }
      };
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id='this_element_contains_my_buttons'></div>
    <input type='button' onclick='alert(arrayToModify);' value='Show the buttons I have clicked' />
  </body>
</html>

EDIT: I have just added some functionality to track button presses in an array, as requested in the comment above

Solution 2

I would advise you use jQuery for this. It would make it a lot simpler.

Firstly, to create the buttons from an array of button ids you could do something along the lines of the following:

var buttons = ['start', 'stop', 'foo', 'bar'];

for(var i = 0; i < buttons.length; i++){
    $('<button>')
        .attr('id', buttons[i])
        .text(buttons[i])
        .appendTo('div');
}

Next, to listen for the button clicks, you could modify the above as follows:

var buttons = ['start', 'stop', 'foo', 'bar'];
var clicks = [];

for(var i = 0; i < buttons.length; i++){
    $('<button>')
        .attr('id', buttons[i])
        .text(buttons[i])
        .appendTo('div')
        .click(function(){
            clicks.push(this.id);
        });
}

I'm not quite sure what you want to do on-click. Could you elaborate?

Here's a jsFiddle demonstrating the solution.

13,374

Author by

myol

Updated on June 04, 2022

Comments

myol almost 2 years

had a look for a guide on this but couldn't really find anything specific on it, and thought you guys could help.

I have a javascript file which performs various tasks onLoad. Currently I have 5 buttons in an HTML page but what I would like to do is to is read from an array in the js file and dynamically create a number of buttons depending what was in the array.

Similarly I want the buttons on click to be 'listened' for (alter an array in the js)

I have an idea that I want to read the array elements and set them as the button IDs and create them. Likewise I want to listen to what button has been clicked by its ID and have it alter an array. But how do I actually go about that process?

Cheers
myol over 12 years

Thanks for that, but I will have to take @DaveRandom's version
myol over 12 years

I can use this with a bit of playing about as I now see what is going on. Thanks.