How can I hide elements in my list and add a 'show more' feature?

Question

I'm using javascript to build a list of results. I have a for-loop that iterates over some data and creates a mydata div, and adds that to the results div. Let's pretend it looks something like this:

<div id="results">
    <div class="mydata">data 1</div>
    <div class="mydata">data 2</div>
    ...
    <div class="mydata">data 20</div>
</div>

What I want to do is only display 5 results at a time , and should the user wish to see more, they can click a show next 5 or show more button (or something similar). Any ideas?

Just to clarify, every time the user clicks "show more" I want to 'unhide' the next 5 elements, not ALL the remaining elements. So each click reveals more elements until all are displayed.

Answer 1

You can use the gt() and lt() selectors along with :visible pretty well here.

The following will show the next 5 results on clicking and removes the link once all items are visible.

$('.mydata:gt(4)').hide().last().after(
    $('<a />').attr('href','#').text('Show more').click(function(){
        var a = this;
        $('.mydata:not(:visible):lt(5)').fadeIn(function(){
         if ($('.mydata:not(:visible)').length == 0) $(a).remove();   
        }); return false;
    })
);

working example: http://jsfiddle.net/niklasvh/nTv7D/

Regardless of what other people are suggesting here, I would not hide the elements using CSS, but do it in JS instead, because if a user has JS disabled and you hide the elements using CSS, he won't get them visible. However, if he has JS disabled, they will never get hidden, nor will that button appear etc, so it has a full noscript fallback in place + search engines don't like hidden content (but they won't know its hidden if you do it on DOM load).

Answer 2

My solution is here: jsFiddle .

You can put this link somewhere:

<a href="#" title="" id="results-show-more">show more</a>

and use the following code:

var limit = 5;
var per_page = 5;
jQuery('#results > div.mydata:gt('+(limit-1)+')').hide();
if (jQuery('#results > div.mydata').length <= limit) {
    jQuery('#results-show-more').hide();
};

jQuery('#results-show-more').bind('click', function(event){
    event.preventDefault();
    limit += per_page;
    jQuery('#results > div.mydata:lt('+(limit)+')').show();
    if (jQuery('#results > div.mydata').length <= limit) {
        jQuery(this).hide();
    }
});

where limit is your current number of results displayed and per_page is number of results shown with each click on "show more". The link disappears if all the results are displayed. See how it works on jsFiddle .

Answer 3

You can create a CSS class like:

.hiddenData { display: none }

and attach it to any quantity of divs that exceeds 5.

After that make handlers for adding/deleting this class from the needed quantity of divs.

jQuery for class removing:

$(".hiddenData").removeClass("hiddenData")

Answer 4

Create a class with something like:

.hidden_class{
  display: none;
}

Add this class to all the mydata div's that you dont want seen. when the user click the button, remove it from the next 5 div's.

repeat everytime the user clicks the "read more" button

Answer 5

This should work...Let me know how it goes

<script type="text/javascript">
  function ShowHide(id) { $("#" + id).toggle(); }
</script>
<div id="results">
    <div class="mydata">data 1</div>
    <div class="mydata">data 2</div>
    <div class="mydata">data 3</div>
    <div class="mydata">data 4</div>
    <div class="mydata">data 5</div>

    <div style="clear:both" onclick="ShowHide('grp6')">More</div>
    <div id="grp6" style="display:none">
      <div class="mydata">data 6</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 7</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 8</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 9</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 10</div>
    </div>
    <div style="clear:both" onclick="ShowHide('grp11')">More</div>
    <div id="grp11" style="display:none">
      <div class="mydata">data 11</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 12</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 13</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 14</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 15</div>
    </div>
</div>

In your forloop, you also have to add these divs hidden container

<div style="clear:both" onclick="ShowHide('grp6')">More</div>
    <div id="grp6" style="display:none">

You get the idea.

Answer 6

Here you have:

   <style>
      /*This hides all items initially*/
      .mydata{
         display: none;
      }
   </style>

Now the script

   <script>
      var currentPage = 1; //Global var that stores the current page
      var itemsPerPage = 5;
      //This function shows a specific 'page'
      function showPage(page){
          $("#results .mydata").each(function(i, elem){
              if(i >= (page-1)*itemsPerPage && i < page*itemsPerPage) //If item is in page, show it
                $(this).show();
              else
                $(this).hide();
          });
          $("#currentPage").text(currentPage);
      }
      $(document).ready(function(){
          showPage(currentPage);
          $("#next").click(function(){
             showPage(++currentPage);
          });
          $("#prev").click(function(){
             showPage(--currentPage);
          });
      });
   </script>

And a sample html:

   <div id="results">
      <div class="mydata">data 1</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 2</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 3</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 4</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 5</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 6</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 7</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 8</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 9</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 10</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 11</div>
      <div class="mydata">data 12</div>
   </div>   
   <a href="javascript:void(0)" id="prev">Previous</a>
   <span id="currentPage"></span>
   <a href="javascript:void(0)" id="next">Next</a>

The only thing remaining is to validate fot not going to a page lower than 1 and higher than the total. But that will be easy.

EDIT : Here you have it running: http://jsfiddle.net/U8Q4Z/

Hope this helps. Cheers.