Defining a model and a view

This guide will show you how to create a simple abbreviation plugin for CKEditor 5.

We will create a toolbar button that lets the users insert abbreviations into their document. These abbreviations will use the <abbr> HTML element with a ‘title’ attribute that will show up in a tooltip when the user hovers over the element. You can check the mechanism hovering over the underlined “HTML” text in the previous sentence.

This first part of the tutorial will cover the basics. We will just insert one possible abbreviation: “WYSIWYG.” We will get user input in the next part of this tutorial series.

If you want to see the final product of this tutorial before you plunge in, check out the live demo.

# Let’s start!

The easiest way to set up your project is to grab the starter files from the GitHub repository for this tutorial. We gathered all the necessary dependencies there, including some CKEditor 5 packages and other files needed to start the editor.

The editor has already been created in the main.js file with some basic plugins. All you need to do is clone the repository, navigate to the starter-files directory, run the npm install command, and you can start coding right away.

git clone https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor5-tutorials-examples
cd ckeditor5-tutorials-examples/abbreviation-plugin/starter-files

npm install
npm run dev

# Plugin structure

Our abbreviation plugin is divided into three components – Abbreviation, AbbreviationUI, and AbbreviationEditing:

• Abbreviation will be the glue that holds the UI and the editing together.
• AbbreviationUI will be responsible for the UI – the toolbar button.
• AbbreviationEditing will enable the abbreviation attribute in the model and introduce a proper model ←→ view conversion.

We put them in the /abbreviation directory. We will be adding more files there in the next parts of the tutorial. This is our directory structure so far:

├── main.js
├── index.html
├── package.json
├── abbreviation
│   ├── abbreviation.js
│   ├── abbreviationediting.js
│   └── abbreviationui.js

Take a look at the 3 components, which have already been defined and imported into main.js.

AbbreviationUI:

// abbreviation/abbreviationui.js

import { Plugin } from 'ckeditor5';

export default class AbbreviationUI extends Plugin {
    init() {
        console.log( 'AbbreviationUI#init() got called' );
    }
}

AbbreviationEditing:

// abbreviation/abbreviationediting.js

import { Plugin } from 'ckeditor5';

export default class AbbreviationEditing extends Plugin {
    init() {
        console.log( 'AbbreviationEditing#init() got called' );
    }
}

Abbreviation:

// abbreviation/abbreviation.js

import AbbreviationEditing from './abbreviationediting';
import AbbreviationUI from './abbreviationui';
import { Plugin } from 'ckeditor5';

export default class Abbreviation extends Plugin {
    static get requires() {
        return [ AbbreviationEditing, AbbreviationUI ];
    }
}

Now, we need to load the Abbreviation plugin in our main.js file. The editor will load the AbbreviationUI and the AbbreviationEditing components by itself, as they are required by our “glue” plugin.

// main.js

import { 
    ClassicEditor,
    Essentials,
    Paragraph,
    Heading,
    List,
    Bold,
    Italic
} from 'ckeditor5';

import 'ckeditor5/ckeditor5.css';

import Abbreviation from './abbreviation/abbreviation';					// ADDED

ClassicEditor
    .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
        plugins: [
            Essentials, Paragraph, Heading, List, Bold, Italic,
            Abbreviation												// ADDED
        ],
        toolbar: [ 'heading', 'bold', 'italic', 'numberedList', 'bulletedList' ]
    } )
    .then( editor => {
        console.log( 'Editor was initialized', editor );
    } )
    .catch( error => {
        console.error( error.stack );
    } );

You should see that the AbbreviationEditing and AbbreviationUI plugins were loaded.

# The model and the view layers

CKEditor 5 implements its own custom data model, which does not map 1:1 to the DOM. The model document is converted into the view, which represents the content that the user is editing.

In the view layer, we will have the <abbr> HTML element, with the title attribute. See what it will look like in the inspector.

In the model, inline elements such as <abbr>, are represented as attributes not as separate elements. In order for our plugin to work, we will need to make sure that we can add abbreviation attribute to the text node.

# Defining the schema

We can do it by defining the model’s schema. With to a couple lines of code, we will allow all text nodes to receive the model abbreviation attribute.

We will simply extend the text node’s schema to accept our abbreviation attribute using the schema.extend() method.

Update the AbbreviationEditing plugin with this definition:

// abbreviation/abbreviationediting.js

import { Plugin } from 'ckeditor5';

export default class AbbreviationEditing extends Plugin {
    init() {
        this._defineSchema();									// ADDED
    }

    _defineSchema() {											// ADDED
        const schema = this.editor.model.schema;

        // Extend the text node's schema to accept the abbreviation attribute.
        schema.extend( '$text', {
            allowAttributes: [ 'abbreviation' ]
        } );
    }
}

# Defining converters

Converters tell the editor how to transform the view to the model (for example, when loading the data to the editor or handling pasted content) and how to render the model to the view (for editing purposes or when retrieving the editor data).

We will need to convert the model abbreviation attribute into a view element (downcast) and vice versa (upcast). We can achieve this by using our conversion helpers and defining what the model and the view is supposed to look like for both conversions.

Converting the full title of the abbreviation is a little bit tricky, because we need to make sure that its value is synchronized between the model and the view.

# Downcast conversion

In the downcast conversion, we will use one of our conversion helpers – attributeToElement() – to transform the model abbreviation attribute into the view <abbr> element.

We will need to use a callback function to get the title stored as a model attribute value and transform it into the title value of the view element. Here, the second parameter of the view callback is the DowncastConversionApi object. We will use its writer property, which will allow us to manipulate the data during downcast conversion, as it contains an instance of the DowncastWriter.

// abbreviation/abbreviationediting.js

import { Plugin } from 'ckeditor5';

export default class AbbreviationEditing extends Plugin {
    init() {
        this._defineSchema();
        this._defineConverters();							// ADDED
    }

    _defineSchema() {
        // Previously defined schema.
        // ...
    }

    _defineConverters() {									// ADDED
        const conversion = this.editor.conversion;

        // Conversion from a model attribute to a view element.
        conversion.for( 'downcast' ).attributeToElement( {
            model: 'abbreviation',
            // Callback function provides access to the model attribute value
            // and the DowncastWriter.
            view: ( modelAttributeValue, conversionApi ) => {
                const { writer } = conversionApi;

                return writer.createAttributeElement( 'abbr', {
                    title: modelAttributeValue
                } );
            }
        } );

    }
}

# Upcast conversion

The upcast conversion tells the editor how the view <abbr> element is supposed to look like in the model. We will transform it using another conversion helper – elementToAttribute().

We also need to grab the title value from the content and use it in the model. We can do that thanks to a callback function, which gives us the access to the view element.

// abbreviation/abbreviationediting.js

import { Plugin } from 'ckeditor5';

export default class AbbreviationEditing extends Plugin {
    init() {
        // Schema and converters initialization.
        // ...
    }

    _defineSchema() {
        // Previously defined schema.
        // ...
    }

    _defineConverters() {
        const conversion = this.editor.conversion;

        conversion.for( 'downcast' ).attributeToElement(
            // Code responsible for downcast conversion.
            // ...
        );

        // Conversion from a view element to a model attribute.
        conversion.for( 'upcast' ).elementToAttribute( {
            view: {
                name: 'abbr',
                attributes: [ 'title' ]
            },
            model: {
                key: 'abbreviation',
                // Callback function provides access to the view element.
                value: viewElement => {
                    const title = viewElement.getAttribute( 'title' );

                    return title;
                }
            }
        } );
    }
}

Thanks to the upcast conversion, our abbreviation added in the index.html should work now. The changes should be visible after the development server refresh.

# Creating a toolbar button

Now we can create our Abbreviation toolbar button using the ButtonView class.

We need to register it in the editor’s UI componentFactory, so it can be displayed in the toolbar.

// abbreviation/abbreviationui.js

import { ButtonView, Plugin } from 'ckeditor5';

export default class AbbreviationUI extends Plugin {
    init() {
        const editor = this.editor;

        editor.ui.componentFactory.add( 'abbreviation', () => {
            const button = new ButtonView();

            button.label = 'Abbreviation';
            button.tooltip = true;
            button.withText = true;

            return button;
        } );
    }
}

We passed the name of the button in the componentFactory.add, so it is now available to use in the toolbar configuration. We can now simply add it to the toolbar in main.js:

// main.js

import { 
    ClassicEditor,
    Essentials,
    Paragraph,
    Heading,
    List,
    Bold,
    Italic
} from 'ckeditor5';

import 'ckeditor5/ckeditor5.css';

import Abbreviation from './abbreviation/abbreviation';

ClassicEditor
    .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
        plugins: [
            Essentials, Paragraph, Heading, List, Bold, Italic, Abbreviation
        ],
        toolbar: [
            'heading', 'bold', 'italic', 'numberedList', 'bulletedList',
            '|',
            'abbreviation'												 // ADDED
        ]
    } )
    .then( editor => {
        console.log( 'Editor was initialized', editor );
    } )
    .catch( error => {
        console.error( error.stack );
    } );

We have the button, so let’s define what should happen after the user clicks it.

We will use the insertContent() method to insert our abbreviation and its title attribute into the document. Inside, we just need to create a new text node with writer.createText().

// abbreviation/abbreviationui.js

import { ButtonView, Plugin } from 'ckeditor5';

export default class AbbreviationUI extends Plugin {
    init() {
        const editor = this.editor;

        editor.ui.componentFactory.add( 'abbreviation', () => {
            // Previously initialized button view.
            // ...

            this.listenTo( button, 'execute', () => {
                const selection = editor.model.document.selection;
                const title = 'What You See Is What You Get';
                const abbr = 'WYSIWYG';

                // Change the model to insert the abbreviation.
                editor.model.change( writer => {
                    editor.model.insertContent(
                        // Create a text node with the abbreviation attribute.
                        writer.createText( abbr, { abbreviation: title } )
                    );
                } );
            } );

            return button;
        } );
    }
}

# Demo

Here you can see the result in action.

# Final code

If you got lost at any point, this is the final implementation of the plugin. You can paste the code from different files into your project, or clone and install the whole thing, and it will run out-of-the-box.