Cancel drag on key press Angular cdk Drag and Drop

Question

I´m working in a application implementing the new drag and drop from angular material CDK and i´m trying to cancel the drag event of the element pressing Esc, i

Answer 1

I also faced this problem for a long time. Finally I could fix it by dispatching a mouseup event that will act as the user releasing the mouse.

@HostListener('window:keyup', ['$event'])
handleKeyboardEvent(event: KeyboardEvent) {
    if (event.key === 'Escape') {
        document.dispatchEvent(new Event('mouseup'));
    }
}

This is an extremely hacky solution and comes with it's down sides. In fact, you are not cancelling the drag but instead dropping. Meaning that if you are hovering a cdkDropList or one is active it will trigger the cdkDropListDropped emmiter for that list. Something you can easily workaround by adding a flag.

private _canceledByEsq = false;

@HostListener('window:keyup', ['$event'])
handleKeyboardEvent(event: KeyboardEvent) {
    if (event.key === 'Escape') {
        this._canceledByEsq = true;
        document.dispatchEvent(new Event('mouseup'));
    }
}

handleDrop() {
    if (!this._canceledByEsq) {
        // Do my data manipulations
    }
}

Hope this helps you... :)

Answer 2

Here's a version using rxjs. It requires a reference to CdkDrag as ViewChild. Unfortunately, because there is no public method to stop dragging on the DragRef you have to use dispatchEvent as the only way to end the dragging process.

There are two parts in the example below. What's happening is that the ended event can only be listened to after a start, and that instance of listening can be stopped by a subject triggered by pressing escape.

• In the AfterViewInit a subscription is created to the started EventEmitter from the CdkDrag directive.
• After the start event, the stream that switches to listening to ended.
• If the cancel request is fired, the stream will be ended by the takeUntil operator, and reset() will be called on the directive to reset the position and dispatchEvent() will be used to stop the drag process.
• Otherwise once the end event is fired, the onDragEnded() method is called from the OP.
• Unless there is some really funniness going on, the ended event will only be fired at most once per start, so there is no need for an additional take(1).

private dragCancelRequest = new Subject();

ngAfterViewInit() {
  this.drag.started.pipe(
    switchMap(({ source }) => source.ended.pipe(
      takeUntil(this.dragCancelRequest.pipe(tap(() => {
        source.reset();
        document.dispatchEvent(new Event('mouseup'));
      })))
    )),
    tap(x => this.onDragEnded(x))
  ).subscribe();
}

@HostListener('window:keyup', ['$event'])
handleKeyboardEvent(event: KeyboardEvent) {
  if (event.key === 'Escape') {
    this.dragCancelRequest.next();
  }
}

Answer 3

You can move the dragged item to a position using:

event['source']['element']['nativeElement']['style']['transform'] = 'translate3d(0,0,0)';
event['source']['_dragRef']['_activeTransform'] = {x: 0, y: 0};
event['source']['_dragRef']['_passiveTransform'] = {x: 0, y: 0};

Answer 4

The best way to do it is to call event.source._dragRef.reset(); (as @AleRubis mentioned in comment) on ESC key press. Now the question is from where you can get that _dragRef outside cdkDrag events (ESC key event), you can save it in a component variable like this when drag starts.

Component:

cdkDragStarted = (event) => { this.dragRef = event.source._dragRef; }

Template:

<p cdkDrag (cdkDragStarted)="cdkDragStarted($event)"> Draggable paragraph </p>

Answer 5

You can use something like...

@HostListener('window:keyup', ['$event'])
handleKeyboardEvent(event: KeyboardEvent) {
    if (event.code === 'Escape') {
        // call dragend event
    }
}