Overview

The ZeroClipboard JavaScript library provides an easy way to copy text to the clipboard using an invisible Adobe Flash movie. The "Zero" signifies that the library is invisible and the user interface is left entirely up to you.

Browsers won't let you access the clipboard directly. So this library puts a flash object on the page to proxy the clipboard for you. The library will move and resize over all the glued objects.

Setup

If you are installing for node.

npm install zeroclipboard

To use the library, simply include the following JavaScript file in your page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="ZeroClipboard.js"></script>

You also need to have the "ZeroClipboard.swf" file available to the browser. If this file is located in the same directory as your web page, then it will work out of the box. However, if the SWF file is hosted elsewhere, you need to set the URL like this (place this code after the script tag):

ZeroClipboard.setDefaults( { moviePath: 'http://YOURSERVER/path/ZeroClipboard.swf' } );

Clients

Now you are ready to create one or more Clients. A client is a single instance of the clipboard library on the page, linked to one or more DOM elements. Here is how to create a client instance:

var clip = new ZeroClipboard();

You can also include an element or array of elements in the new client. * This example uses jQuery to find the button.

var clip = new ZeroClipboard($("#my-button"));

Next, you can set some options.

Setting Options

There are default options you can set before, or when you create a new client.

var _defaults = {
  moviePath:         "ZeroClipboard.swf",        // URL to movie
  trustedDomains:    undefined,                  // Domains that we should trust (single string or array of strings)
  hoverClass:        "zeroclipboard-is-hover",   // The class used to hover over the object
  activeClass:       "zeroclipboard-is-active",  // The class used to set object active
  allowScriptAccess: "sameDomain",               // SWF outbound scripting policy
  useNoCache:        true                        // Include a nocache query parameter on requests for the SWF
};

You can override the defaults using ZeroClipboard.setDefaults({ moviePath: "new/path" }) before you create any clients.

You can also set the options when creating a new client by passing an optional json object new ZeroClipboard($("#d_clip_button"), { moviePath: "new/path", text: "Copy me!" })

A note on the `allowScriptAccess` option

For version 1.1.7 and below, the embed tag had the allowScriptAccess parameter hard-coded to always. This allowed the "ZeroClipboard.swf" file to be hosted on an external domain. However, to enhance security, versions after 1.1.7 have an option for allowScriptAccess with a default of sameDomain, which only allows "ZeroClipboard.swf" to be served from the same domain as the hosting page.

If you hosted "ZeroClipboard.swf" on a different domain than the hosting page on version 1.1.7 or below, when you upgrade to a version above 1.1.7, you should either move "ZeroClipboard.swf" to the same domain as the hosting page or set the allowScriptAccess option to always.

For more information about allowScriptAccess, consult the official Flash documentation.

Text To Copy

Setting the clipboard text happens 3 ways.

Set the text via data-clipboard-target attribute on the button. ZeroClipboard will look for the target element via ID and try and get the text value via .value or .textContent or .innerText.

<button id="my-button" data-clipboard-target="clipboard_text">Copy to Clipboard</button>

<input type="text" id="clipboard_text" value="Clipboard Text"/>
<textarea id="clipboard_textarea">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non
proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</textarea>
<pre id="clipboard_pre">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non
proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</pre>

Set the text via data-clipboard-text attribute on the button. Doing this will let ZeroClipboard take care of the rest.

<button id="my-button" data-clipboard-text="Copy me!">Copy to Clipboard</button>

Set the text via clip.setText property. You can call this function at any time; when the page first loads, or later in an onMouseOver or onMouseDown handler. Example:

clip.setText( "Copy me!" );

Gluing

Gluing refers to the process of "linking" the Flash movie to a DOM element on the page. Since the Flash movie is completely transparent, the user sees nothing out of the ordinary.

The Flash movie receives the click event and copies the text to the clipboard. Also, mouse actions like hovering and mouse-down generate events that you can capture (see Event Handlers below).

To glue elements, you must pass an element, or array of elements to the glue function.

Here is how to glue your clip library instance to a DOM element:

clip.glue( document.getElementById('d_clip_button') );

You can pass in a reference to the actual DOM element object itself or an array of DOM objects. The rest all happens automatically -- the movie is created, all your options set, and it is floated above the element, awaiting clicks from the user.

Recommended Implementation

<button id="my-button" data-clipboard-text="Copy me!" title="Click to copy to clipboard.">Copy to Clipboard</button>

And the code:

var clip = new ZeroClipboard( $("button#my-button") );

Page Resizing

If the page gets resized, or something happens which moves your DOM element, you will need to reposition the movie. This can be achieved by calling the reposition() method. Example:

clip.reposition();

A typical use of this is to put it inside a window.onresize handler.

CSS Effects

Since the Flash movie is floating on top of your DOM element, it will receive all the mouse events before the browser has a chance to catch them. However, for convenience these events are passed through to your clipboard client which you can capture (see Event Handlers below). But in addition to this, the Flash movie can also activate CSS classes on your DOM element to simulate the ":hover" and ":active" pseudo-classes.

If this feature is enabled, the CSS classes "hover" and "active" are added / removed to your DOM element as the mouse hovers over and clicks the Flash movie. This essentially allows your button to behave normally, even though the floating Flash movie is receiving all the mouse events. Please note that the actual CSS pseudo-classes ":hover" and ":active" are not used -- these cannot be programmatically activated with current browser software. Instead, sub-classes named "zeroclipboard-is-hover" and "zeroclipboard-is-active" are used. Example CSS:

  #d_clip_button {
    width:150px;
    text-align:center;
    border:1px solid black;
    background-color:#ccc;
    margin:10px; padding:10px;
  }
  #d_clip_button.zeroclipboard-is-hover { background-color:#eee; }
  #d_clip_button.zeroclipboard-is-active { background-color:#aaa; }

These classes are for a DOM element with an ID: "d_clip_button". The "zeroclipboard-is-hover" and "zeroclipboard-is-active" sub-classes would automatically be activated as the user hovers over, and clicks down on the Flash movie, respectively. They behave exactly like CSS pseudo-classes of the same names.

Event Handlers

The clipboard library allows you set a number of different event handlers. These are all set by calling the on() method, as in this example:

clip.on( 'load', my_load_handler );

The first argument is the name of the event, and the second is a reference to your function. The function may be passed by name (string) or an actual reference to the function object

Your custom function will be passed at least one argument -- a reference to the clipboard client object. However, certain events pass additional arguments, which are described in each section below. The following subsections describe all the available events you can hook.

Event handlers can be removed by calling the off() method, which has the same method signature as on():

clip.off( 'load', my_load_handler );

load

The load event is fired when the Flash movie completes loading and is ready for action. Please note that you don't need to listen for this event to set options -- those are automatically passed to the movie if you call them before it loads. Example use:

clip.on( 'load', function ( client, args ) {
  alert( "movie has loaded" );
});