django-clippy - Writing to the Clipboard from within Webpages

django-clippy provides a template tag for the Django Web Framework to allow copying the Clipboard.

{% load clippy %}
<p><input id="clipfield" value="Data in Field"> {% clippy "clipfield" %}

Here is what Clippy looks like on GitHub:

To install copy clippy/static/clippy.swf into your MEDIA_ROOT and put the clippy directory somewhere into your Python path. If you have pip installed pip install django-clippy should do the job. Or get it at http://github.com/mdornseif/django-clippy or at the Python Package Index.

Add "clippy" to your INSTALLED_APPS in your settings.py. This should be enough to use the {% clippy "id" %} template tag in your templates.

The template tag needs the id of the field you want to copy to the clipboard as a parameter. You can give it an additional parameter describing the background color to use for the widget.

{% clippy "someid" "#FF0000" %}

If you don't give a color, the color given in settings.CLIPPY_BGCOLOR is used. It CLIPPY_BGCOLOR is not set, #ffffff is used as a fall back.

The code comes with a demo application. If you have pip and virtualenv installed, just type make dependencies runserver and go to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ to play with it.

If you see errors like ImportError: No module named django-clippy-1.0 ensure that your durrend directory name has no dots and spaces in it. E.g. cd ..; mv django-clippy-1.0 django-clippy-10; cd django-clippy-10.

Using the Flash Widget without Django

The "copy to clipboard" functionality is not reliably available in Javascript therefore it is implemented in Flash. If you don't use Django, you obviously can use the Flash widged directly in your HTML code. It can be called like this:

<span id="someid">Somevalue</span>
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"
        width="110" height="14" id="clippy_someid">
    <param name="movie" value="/mymedia/clippy.swf"/>
    <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" />
    <param name="quality" value="high" />
    <param name="scale" value="noscale" />
    <param NAME="FlashVars" value="id=someid">
    <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff">
    <embed src="/mymedia/clippy.swf?x=23"
        width="110" height="14" name="clippy" quality="high"
        allowScriptAccess="always"
        type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
        pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
        FlashVars="id=someid" bgcolor="#ffffff" /></object>

The widget understands the following parameters:

• id - mandantory. Id from which the
• copied - text to display after copying. Default is "copied!"
• copyto - text to display before copying. Default is "copy to clipboard"
• callBack - Javascript function to be called after copying

Compiling the Flash Widget

In order to compile Clippy from source, you need to install the following:

• haXe
• swfmill

The haXe code is in Clippy.hx, the button images are in assets, and the compiler config is in compile.hxml. Make sure you look at all of these to see where and what you'll need to modify. To compile everything into a final SWF, type make flash.

If that is successful clippy/static//clippy.swf should be the new flash widged which you need to copy to your MEDIA_PATH.

History

The original clippy code is by Tom Preston-Werner. This version contains Fixes by Zhang Jinzhu and Kyle Neath. Maximillian Dornseif integrated various patches and created the Django template Tag. Check the GitHub Fork Network to better understand the project history.

License

MIT License (see LICENSE file)