jsPlumb

jsPlumb provides a means for a developer to visually connect elements on their web pages. First released in 2009 with support for IE6 using VML, more recent version use SVG and run on all browsers from IE9 and later. The final version of jsPlumb to support IE8 was 1.7.10. You can still get 1.7.10 from a tag, if you need it.

If you're new to jsPlumb, please do take the time to read the documentation. There are a few integration issues that you should be aware of: z-index needs special attention, for example.

This project is the 'Community Edition' of jsPlumb. The 'Toolkit Edition' is a commercially-licensed wrapper around this. This project is not the correct place to report issues for the Toolkit edition. The Toolkit is not a public project. Issues reported for the Toolkit edition in this issue tracker will be deleted.

There are currently two versions of the Community Edition available - the master branch, which is 2.x.x, and which is the continuation of the original Javascript code from the first release of jsPlumb back in 2009, and the dev/4.x branch, which is a rewrite in Typescript, at the time of writing on release 4.0.0-RC24. New users of jsPlumb should use this version, as 2.15.3 is going to be the final release in the 2.x branch, after which that branch will be in maintenance mode and will have no new features added to it.

Installation

For all versions < 4.x:

npm install jsplumb

We package the following files:

"files": [
    "index.d.ts",
    "dist/js/jsplumb.js",
    "dist/js/jsplumb.min.js",
    "css/jsplumbtoolkit-defaults.css"
  ],

For 4.x onwards:

npm install @jsplumb/browser-ui

@jsplumb/browser-ui will pull in @jsplumb/core as a dependency.

To use jsPlumb 4.x as a direct import without a build system, you will need to import both browser-ui and core:

<script src="node_modules/@jsplumb/core/js/jsplumb.core.umd.js"></script>
<script src="node_modules/@jsplumb/browser-ui/js/jsplumb.browser-ui.umd.js"></script>

Version numbering

NOTE jsPlumb does not follow strict semantic versioning. It is not at all recommended that you use wildcards when specifying a dependency on jsPlumb. The given command will install jsPlumb version using a caret for wildcard, eg ^2.9.0 - you might want to take off the caret.

jsPlumb does not follow strict semantic versioning largely because of the stipulation that breaking changes must result in the major version being bumped. A major version implies something fundamental has occurred. The bump from 1.7.10 to 2.0.0 in jsPlumb was caused by the removal of the VML renderer, meaning IE6 and IE8 were no longer supported. You may say, a-ha! A breaking change! And you would be right; that was a breaking change. But a new major version might also occur when a new capability is added that doesn't affect existing functionality. And not every breaking change constitutes a fundamental change in the library itself. This note about semver was added to jsPlumb, for example, due to a discussion about how the stop event behaviour in the underlying drag library - Katavorio - had changed. Semver would say that the major version should have been bumped. But the change was not something fundamental. No capabilities had been added or removed...just some variables had been shuffled around.

Maybe you agree with this viewpoint. Maybe you don't. At least one person on Twitter does not.

We recommend including the jsplumbtoolkit-defaults.css file to begin with, as it provides some sane default values.

Documentation

For the Community edition the documentation can now be found here:

https://docs.jsplumbtoolkit.com/community/current/index.html

Typescript

For 2.x versions, an index.d.ts is included in the npm package. For 4.x versions, .d.ts files corresponding to all of the source Typescript files are included.

Issues

jsPlumb uses GitHub's issue tracker for enhancements and bugs. A losing battle was fought against the usage of Github for questions; now it seems to be the default, and the Google group is no longer in use.

Requirements

No external dependencies.

jsPlumb in action

Community Edition

Links to various demonstrations can be found here.

Toolkit Edition

Links to various demonstrations can be found here.

jsPlumb Helper Projects

NOTE These projects were/are used by 2.x, but not 4.x. In version 4.x they've all been pulled in to the Community Edition code (since they could still be packaged alone easily enough using Rollup).

• Bezier curve functions:

https://github.com/jsplumb/jsBezier

• Simple geometry functions:

https://github.com/jsplumb/biltong

• Drag+drop:

https://github.com/jsplumb/katavorio

• Events:

https://github.com/jsplumb/mottle

Tests

There is a full suite of unit tests checked in to the test and dist/test directories.

Twitter

@jsplumblib

Note that we do not answer questions on Twitter though - it's useless for discussions. But we do announce things from time to time on there.

License

All 1.x.x, 2.x.x and 4.x.x versions of jsPlumb Community edition are dual-licensed under both MIT and GPLv2.