I'm working on a simple diagram editor using KineticJS. I would like to use two separate canvases for the palette area (that contains a number of Kinetic.Groups that represent the different nodes of the network I might create), and the diagramming area where I can add nodes from the palette via drag and drop, and then add connections between the various nodes as specific anchor points. I'm having trouble figuring out the drag and drop process from the palette canvas of (stationary) Kinetic.Groups over to the other canvas containing diagramming area. I'm guessing that I need to fire off of the dragstart event for the palette objects (although I don't want these themselves to be draggable), and then do something like create an opague copy of the palette object that can be dragged around, and finally dropped into the diagramming area (with full opacity).
Can groups be dragged outside of a the staging canvases boundaries? Maybe I need to generate an image when I start to drag from the palette, drag that image over, and then create another group when dropping into the diagramming area.
Does any one know of any examples that might point me in the right direction, or who can offer some insight (even code) into the required process. I've searched the KineticJS examples but can't quite find enough to get me going.
Here’s one way to drag nodes from a source palette into a destination group:
A Fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/m1erickson/xtVyL/
Network nodes are represented by small icons (which are really small kinetic image objects).
The user can drag any icon from the source palette to any destination group.
The groups are just defined areas on the canvas, but could be Kinetc.Groups for more flexibility.
During the dragend event, a new duplicate copy of the dragged icon is created in the destination group.
After the dragend event is complete, the original palette icon is automatically moved from The newly created duplicate icon can be dragged around the destination group (but not outside that group).
Here is code and a Fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/m1erickson/xtVyL/