Simple jQuery Accordion
You must have seen in many websites there are very well designed and impressive accordion menus. You can also find a lot of jQuery plugins to make this possible in your own website. But did you ever try to understand them? I tried to understand them for a while, since I know jQuery enough, so I tried making my own accordion in order to understand it. I spent sometime and came up with a simplest idea possible. You can also use the script I've created in your own webpage.
Simple jQuery Accordion
Let's start with HTML, first you should put the default tags inside your page:
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Your page's title</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> </BODY> </HTML>
Also put the tags of your style sheet and script tags linking to jQuery source file.
//CSS file. <link href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet"> //jQuery files. <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.1.min.js"></script> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-migrate-1.2.1.min.js"></script>
Now comes the part of the content which gets converted into an accordion. The script I've created looks for a div element with an id of 'tabs' and a heading tag and anything after it inside the div element. The heading tag will be converted to a click able element and if you click it, the contents are expanded and visible. So only two things are necessary, first a div element or any kind of element you like but it must have an id of 'tabs' and then a heading tag inside it, you can wrap the content inside any kind of tag you like.
<div id="tabs"> <h1>Heading</h1> <p>Content</p> //or <span>Content</span> //or <div>Cotent</div> </div>
That is the HTML code for the accordion, remember you must have an element with the id of "tabs", any kind of element and a heading tag. The content can be wrapped with any tag you like.
jQuery Code
Let's get started with the jQuery code. First let's write the code which initialises the script when the page is loaded completely.
$(document).ready(function () {
//Script comes here.
});So we'll be using selectors and a few functions. I'll explain them.
$(''); //This is the structure of a jQuery selector.
.hide(); //This is a function which hides the selected element.
.next(); //This is a function which selects the next sibling of currently selected element.
.slideUp(); //This is a function which slides up the selected element.
.slideDown(); //This is a function which slides down the selected element.So at first we have to hide the content elements. Here is the code:
$('#tabs p').hide();I have wrapped the content in a p tag. You can use any tag just remove the p in above jQuery code with the element you used. Now we have to initiate a function which is triggered when the viewer clicks on the heading tag. Here is the code.
$('#tabs h1').click(function() {
});The above code is initiated when the user clicks on the heading tag and the codes inside this function is run. First let's use a condition statement to make things simple. If the contents are visible then the click function should hide the contents, if they are already hidden then the function should show the contents. So the condition is here:
if ($(this).next().is(':visible')) {
//If the next element of the clicked heading tag is visible, then the code here will be run.
} else {
//If the next element of the clicked heading tag is not visible, then the code here will be run.
}Now if the contents are invisible we should slide the contents down. For that we have to use the following code:
$(this).next().slideDown('slow');The above code selects the next element of the clicked heading tag and slide it down. Now we have to write a code which slides the content up if the header is clicked again. Here is the code:
$(this).next().slideUp('slow');The above code slides the contents up, so the full Javascript code looks like:
$(document).ready(function() {
$('#tabs p').hide();
$('#tabs h1').click(function() {
if ($(this).next().is(':visible')) {
$(this).next().slideUp('slow');
} else {
$(this).next().slideDown('slow');
}
});
});
And the full HTML code looks like:
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Simple Accordion</TITLE> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.1.min.js"></script> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-migrate-1.2.1.min.js"></script> </HEAD> <BODY> <div id="tabs"> <h1>Heading</h1> <p>Contents</p> <h1>Heading</h1> <p>Contents</p> <h1>Heading</h1> <p>Contents</p> </div> </BODY> </HTML>
Hope you've learnt something and consider this tutorial useful. If you want a demo, then please click here.
