SVG trigger animation with event

javascript events animation svg

38,923

Solution 1

Here's an article that covers what you need:
~~http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/advanced-svg-animation-techniques/~~

Edit: link is removed. Archived copies:

In short:

Create the <animation> with begin="indefinite" so that it won't treat the animation as starting on document load. You can do this either via JavaScript or raw SVG source.
Call beginElement() on the SVGAnimationElement instance (the <animate> element) when you're ready for the animation to start. For your use case, use a standard addEventListener() callback to invoke this method when you're ready, e.g.
```
myAnimationElement.addEventListener('mySpecialEvent',function(){
  myAnimationElement.beginElement();
},false);
```

Solution 2

Start an SVG animation:

Without javascript, using the "event-value" type of the begin attribute="id.event" (without an "on" prefix) on an animation element; or

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="600px" height="400px">
  <rect x="10" y="10" width="100" height="100">
    <animate attributeName="x" begin="go.click" dur="2s" from="10" to="300" fill="freeze" />
  </rect>
</svg>

<button id="go">Go</button>

(W3C 2018, "SVG Animations Level 2, Editor’s Draft", https://svgwg.org/specs/animations/), " Attributes to control the timing of the animation", "begin" attribute, "event-value" value type, https://svgwg.org/specs/animations/#TimingAttributes

From javascript, by setting an animation element's begin attribute to "indefinite"; and calling beginElement() from script;

function go () {
  var elements = document.getElementsByTagName("animate");
  for (var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) {
    elements[i].beginElement();
  }
}

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="600px" height="400px">
  <rect x="10" y="10" width="100" height="100">
    <!-- begin="indefinite" allows us to start the animation from script -->
    <animate attributeName="x" begin="indefinite" dur="2s" from="10" to="300" fill="freeze" />
  </rect>
</svg>

<button onclick="go();">Go</button>

(W3C 2018, "SVG Animations Level 2, Editor’s Draft", https://svgwg.org/specs/animations/), " Attributes to control the timing of the animation", "begin" attribute, "indefinite" value type, https://svgwg.org/specs/animations/#TimingAttributes

38,923

Hendekagon

github

Updated on July 09, 2022

Comments

Hendekagon almost 2 years

how do I trigger an svg animate element to begin animating via javascript with an arbitrary event ? I'm imagining something like begin="mySpecialEvent", then later I can send mySpecialEvent and the animation will start (or start again if it has already played).
- Phrogz over 12 years
  
  +1 for a great question; I had been wondering the same thing for a separate question. Now that I know how to kick off SVG animation on demand I can improve that answer. :)
Mike Aski over 11 years

Great. In fact, simply calling beginElement() also made the job.
Starwave about 9 years

Unfortunately, doesn't work on IE: "Object doesn't support property or method 'beginElement'"
Phrogz about 9 years

@Starwave Very little works in IE. This is an unfortunate fact of web development.
web-tiki about 9 years

@Phrogz the first link in answer is dead. Maybe it can be replaced by this one w3.org/TR/SVG/interact.html#SVGEvents ?
Persijn about 8 years

What are we going to use now that SVG animations are not longer supported?
JoshuaDavid almost 8 years

@Persijn You can use CSS animations to achieve just about everything you can with SMIL.
David Smith over 7 years

SVG animations (aka SMIL animations) are no longer depreciated: groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/…
Tucaen almost 4 years

This has one drawback. You can no longer reference this animation to start others. For example this is not working ``` <animateMotion #flyUpText id="moveAnimation" dur="1s" begin="indefinite" path="M 0 0 25 -50" /> <set attributeName="display" to="block" begin="moveAnimation.begin" /> <set attributeName="display" to="none" begin="moveAnimation.end" /> ``` Or am I doing someting wrong? When setting begin of #flyUpText to "0s" it's working as expected. Besides it's triggered right away.
ashleedawg over 3 years

lol, Very little works in IE