Blog: Managing modal dialogs in Ember.js with Promises

Waiting, resolving. JavaScript promises provide an excellent pattern for managing modals. A rough concept could work like this:

1. Call a method which creates a promise
2. Render a modal into the DOM, pass in a callback to resolve the promise
3. Resolve the promise to unrender the modal and pass back a result

Tobias made Ember Promise Modals so we don't have to implement this on our own. With this addon, can launch any component as a modal, wait for a result, and continue with our apps workflow.

let result = await this.modals.open('name-of-your-component', {
  /* data passed to the component */
  question: 'Life, the universe and everything?',
});

This will trigger a modal dialog, which automatically gains focus for its first focussable element and keyboard accessibility including support for closing the dialog with ESC as required by WAI ARIA best practices thanks to the included focus-trap integration. It will dim the underlying content for you with a customizable backdrop also.

The passed component recieve optional data as @data and a @close action, which will close the modal and resolve the promise. Anything passed to the action will become the value the promise resolves with, making it easy to communicate data in the preferred Data-Down-Actions-Up pattern of Ember.js.

{{! example modal component using passed data and close action}}
<div>
  <header>
    <button type="button" {{on "click" @close}}>Close</button>
  </header>
  <p>{{@data.question}}</p>
</div>

CSS based animations

For the first stable release, Nick and myself added native CSS animations using CSS @keyframes, which allow for full control over how dialogs and the dimming backdrop appear and disappear on the screen without hogging render performance. A nice and swift default animation is provided out of the box.

If you don't like the default, how about something a little more menacing?

@keyframes spiral-in {
  0% {
    opacity: 0;
    transform: rotate(540deg) scale(0.01);
  }
  90% {
    opacity: 1;
    transform: rotate(-20deg) scale(1.2);
  }
  100% {
    opacity: 1;
    transform: rotate(0) scale(1);
  }
}

:root {
  --epm-animation-modal-in: var(--epm-animation-modal-in-duration) ease-out var(
      --epm-animation-modal-in-delay
    )
    forwards spiral-in;
  --epm-animation-modal-in-duration: 0.7s;
}

Modals can be fun. Promised.