Grid clipboard interactions

Grid clipboard interactions

Revision history

Version	Author	Date	Notes
1.0	Radoslav Karaivanov	07/10/2019	Initial draft
1.1	Zdravko Kolev	07/10/2019	Finalizing spec

Table of content

1. Overview
2. Functionality
3. Implementation
4. Issues and limitations
5. API
6. Test Scenarios

Overview

The premise of this document is to expose a sufficiently fast, easy and customizable way of transferring data in/out of the grid through the current selection. The main idea being to give the user the ability to copy/paste data from the grid into Excel and/or other external programs.

The implementation is based on the default cut, copy and paste browser events with the eventual possibility to use the Clipboard API once it is standardized across most of the browser vendors.

The current version of this specification covers only the copy from gridIniti behavior.

Functionality

From the point of the end user, the copy interaction should Just work™ with the default interaction defined by the browser and operating system. Thus for the copy and paste behaviors, these are:

• Windows/Unix based
  • Ctrl + C / Ctrl + Ins as a keyboard shortcut
  • Ctrl + V / Shift + Ins as a keyboard shortcut
  • Copy/Paste action through the browser menu
• macOS
  • ⌘ Cmd + C as a keyboard shortcut
  • ⌘ Cmd + V as a keyboard shortcut
  • Copy/Paste action through the browser menu

Implementation

There is a new @Input property object exposed from the grid - clipboardOptions, and a new @Output onGridCopy notifying when a copy is performed.

Issues and limitations

1. Both the cut and copy events are not natively supported in Internet Explorer. The exception is the paste event (IE 11) which is emitted but does not expose the clipboardData property in the event.
2. The copy behavior is disabled while the grid is in edit mode.

API

clipboardOptions @Input properties

Name	Description	Type	Default value
enabled	Enables/disables copying of selected cells	Boolean	true
copyHeaders	When performing the copy, include the associated headers	Boolean	true
copyFormatters	Apply any existing column formatters to the copied data	Boolean	true
separator	The string separator to use the for formatting the data in the clipboard	String	\t

@Outputs

Name	Description	Cancelable	Event arguments
onGridCopy	Emitted before processing the selected cells and writing to the clipboard.	True	IGridClipboardEvent

Note: When the IGridClipboardEvent is canceled the default browser copy behavior takes place.

IGridClipboardEvent

Name	Description	Type	Default value
data	The data from the all the selected cells in the grid	Array	[]
cancel	When canceled the default browser behavior takes place	Boolean	false

Test scenarios

Automation

• Copy data with default settings
• Copy data when there are no selected cells
• Copy data with different separator
• Copy data without headers
• Copy data with Disabled clipboardOptions
• With Disabled copyFormatters
• Cancel onGridCopy event
• Copy when there is a cell in edit mode