clipboard.js

A modern approach to copy & cut to the clipboard. No Flash. No dependencies. Just 2kb.

Why

Copy text to the clipboard shouldn't be hard. It shouldn't require dozens of steps to configure or hundreds of KBs to load. But most of all, it shouldn't depend on Flash or any bloated framework.

That's why clipboard.js exists.

And remember with great power comes great responsibility.

Install

You can get it on npm.

npm install clipboard --save

Or bower, too.

bower install clipboard --save

If you're not into package management, just download a ZIP file.

Setup

First, include the script located on the dist folder

<script src="dist/clipboard.min.js"></script>

Now, you need to instantiate it using a DOM selector. This selector corresponds to the trigger element, i.e. <button>.

new Clipboard('.btn');

Usage

We're living a declarative renaissance, that's why we decided to take advantage of HTML5 data attributes for better usability.

Copy text from attribute

The easiest way to copy some content to the clipboard, is to include a data-text attribute in your trigger element.

<!-- Trigger -->
<button class="btn" data-text="Just because you can doesn't mean you should — clipboard.js">
    Copy to clipboard
</button>

Copy text from another element

Alternatively, you can copy content from another element by adding a data-target attribute in your trigger element.

The value you include on this attribute needs to match another's element id attribute.

<!-- Target -->
<input id="foo" value="https://github.com/zenorocha/clipboard.js.git">

<!-- Trigger -->
<button class="btn" data-target="foo">
    <img src="assets/clippy.svg" alt="Copy to clipboard">
</button>

Cut text from another element

Additionally, you can define a data-action attribute to specify if you want to either copy or cut content.

If you omit this attribute, copy will be used by default.

<!-- Target -->
<textarea id="bar">Mussum ipsum cacilds...</textarea>

<!-- Trigger -->
<button class="btn" data-action="cut" data-target="bar">
    Cut to clipboard
</button>

As you may expect, the cut action only works on <input> or <textarea> elements.

Events

There are cases where you'd like to capture what has been copied/cut or even check if there was an error.

That's why we fire custom events such as success and error for you to listen and implement your custom logic.

But to achieve that, first you need to access the triggers property from your clipboard instance.

var clipboard = new Clipboard('.btn');
var btns = clipboard.triggers;

Internally, this property is just a collections of nodes resulted from a querySelectorAll operation. So all you have to do now is loop through that collection and attach listeners.

for (var i = 0; i < btns.length; i++) {
    btns[i].addEventListener('success', function(e) {
        console.info('Action:', e.detail.action);
        console.info('Text:', e.detail.text);
    });

    btns[i].addEventListener('error', function(e) {
        alert(e.detail);
    });
}

Browser Support

This library relies on both Selection and execCommand APIs. When combined, they're supported in the following browsers.

42+ ✔	41+ ✔	9+ ✔	29+ ✔	Nope ✘

License

MIT License © Zeno Rocha