index.md

Shepherd

Guide your users through a tour of your app.

Dependencies

Popper

Install

npm

npm install shepherd.js --save

yarn

yarn add shepherd.js

Install with Eager

Note: Eager is now Cloudflare Apps

We will eventually make this work again, but it probably currently does not.

Usage

First create a new Tour instance for your tour:

const tour = new Shepherd.Tour({
  defaults: { 
    classes: 'shepherd-theme-arrows',
    scrollTo: true
  }
});

The defaults option allows you to specify any options which should be applied to all this tour's steps by default.

Next, add your steps:

tour.addStep('example-step', {
  text: 'This step is attached to the bottom of the <code>.example-css-selector</code> element.',
  attachTo: '.example-css-selector bottom',
  classes: 'example-step-extra-class',
  buttons: [
    { 
      text: 'Next',
      action: tour.next
    }
  ]
});

Finally, to start the tour, just call start on your Tour instance:

tour.start();

API

Global Shepherd Object

Shepherd exposes a single object onto the window, Shepherd.

That global object fires several events to let you link up actions with events occurring in any tour:

Methods

• Shepherd.on(eventName, handler, [context]): Bind an event
• Shepherd.off(eventName, [handler]): Unbind an event
• Shepherd.once(eventName, handler, [context]): Bind just the next instance of an event

Events

The global Shepherd fires the following events whenever a Tour instance fires them. It adds to the object passed to the event handlers a tour key pointing to the instance which fired the event:

• complete
• cancel
• hide
• show
• start
• active
• inactive

Current Tour

The global Shepherd includes a property which is always set to the currently active tour, or null if there is no active tour:

• Shepherd.activeTour

Tour Instances

Creation

You create a Tour object for each tour you'd like to create.

Tour's constructor accepts a hash of options:

const myTour = new Shepherd.Tour(options);

Tour Options

• steps: An array of Step instances to initialize the tour with
• defaults: Default options for Steps created through addStep

Tour Methods

• addStep(id, options): Creates a new Step object with options, and returns the Step instance it created. If you'd like you can also just pass an options hash which includes id as a key. If the options hash doesn't include an id, one will be generated. You can also pass an existing Step instance rather than options, but note that Shepherd does not support a Step being attached to multiple Tours.
• getById(id): Return a step with a specific id
• next(): Advance to the next step, in the order they were added
• back(): Show the previous step, in the order they were added
• cancel(): Trigger cancel on the current step, hiding it without advancing
• hide(): Hide the current step
• show([id]): Show the step specified by id (if it's a string), or index (if it's a number) provided. Defaults to the first step.
• start(): Show the first step and begin the tour
• getCurrentStep(): Returns the currently shown step
• on(eventName, handler, [context]): Bind an event
• off(eventName, [handler]): Unbind an event
• once(eventName, handler, [context]): Bind just the next instance of an event

Tour Events

• complete: Triggered when the last step is advanced
• cancel
• hide
• show: Triggered with a hash of the step and the previous step
• start

Steps are instances of the Step object. They are generally created by the Tour::addStep method, which returns the Step instance it created.

Steps

Step Options

• text: The text in the body of the step. It can be one of four types:
  • HTML string
  • Array of HTML strings
  • HTMLElement object
  • Function to be executed when the step is built. It must return one the three options above.
• title: The steps title. It becomes an h3 at the top of the step.
• attachTo: What element the step should be attached to on the page. It can either be a string of the form "element on", or an object with those properties. For example: ".some #element left", or {element: '.some #element', on: 'left'}. If you use the object syntax, element can also be a DOM element. If you don't specify an attachTo the element will appear in the middle of the screen.
• beforeShowPromise: A function that returns a promise. When the promise resolves, the rest of the show code for the step will execute.
• classes: Extra classes to add to the step. shepherd-theme-arrows will give you our theme.
• buttons: An array of buttons to add to the step. By default we add a Next button which triggers next(), set this to false to disable. Each button in the array is an object of the format:
  • text: The HTML text of the button
  • classes: Extra classes to apply to the <a>
  • action: A function executed when the button is clicked on
  • events: A hash of events to bind onto the button, for example {'mouseover': function(){}}. Adding a click event to events when you already have an action specified is not supported. You can use events to skip steps or navigate to specific steps, with something like:

  events: {  
    click: function() {  
      return Shepherd.activeTour.show('some_step_name');  
    }  
  }

• advanceOn: An action on the page which should advance shepherd to the next step. It can be of the form "selector event", or an object with those properties. For example: ".some-element click", or {selector: '.some-element', event: 'click'}. It doesn't have to be an event inside the tour, it can be any event fired on any element on the page. You can also always manually advance the Tour by calling myTour.next().
• renderLocation: An HTMLElement or selector string of the element you want the tour step to render in. Most of the time, you will not need to pass anything, and it will default to document.body, but this is needed for <dialog> and might as well support passing anything.
• showCancelLink: Should a cancel "✕" be shown in the header of the step?
• scrollTo: Should the element be scrolled to when this step is shown?
• scrollToHandler: A function that lets you override the default scrollTo behavior and define a custom action to do the scrolling, and possibly other logic.
• when: You can define show, hide, etc events inside when. For example:

when: {
  show: function() {
    window.scrollTo(0, 0);
  }
}

• popperOptions: Extra options to pass to popper.js

Step Methods

• show(): Show this step
• hide(): Hide this step
• cancel(): Hide this step and trigger the cancel event
• complete(): Hide this step and trigger the complete event
• scrollTo(): Scroll to this step's element
• isOpen(): Returns true if the step is currently shown
• destroy(): Remove the element
• on(eventName, handler, [context]): Bind an event
• off(eventName, [handler]): Unbind an event
• once(eventName, handler, [context]): Bind just the next instance of an event

Step Events

• before-show
• show
• before-hide
• hide
• complete
• cancel
• destroy

Please note that complete and cancel are only ever triggered if you call the associated methods in your code.

Advancing on Actions

You can use the advanceOn option, or the Next button, to advance steps. If you would like however to have a step advance on a complex user action, you can do the following:

const myStep = myTour.addStep('my-step', options);

yourApp.on('some-event', () => {
  if (myStep.isOpen()){
    Shepherd.activeTour.next();
  }
});

It's strongly recommended that you use some sort of event mediator to connect your app's actions with Shepherd, to prevent having to sprinkle Shepherd code throughout your codebase, and to keep things loosely coupled. You can create a basic mediator if need be using the Evented object which is provided with Shepherd:

const mediator = new Shepherd.Evented();

You can then trigger events in one part of your app:

mediator.trigger('user-create');

And listen for them in other areas:

mediator.on('user-create', () => {});

Browser Support

IE9+ and all modern browsers

Projects Using Shepherd

Here we showcase some of the awesome libraries built using Shepherd.

ember-shepherd

Ember addon for the site tour library Shepherd

SimplePlanner

SimplePlanner uses Shepherd to help new users get familiar with its collaborative scheduling approach. You do need to sign up via OAuth or email to see the scheduling tour. Check out the Envato Tuts+ Startup Series on its codebase which describes how Simple Planner was built.

Your Project Here

If you have a cool open-source library built on Shepherd, PR this doc.