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Frames

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Frames

Basic frame

Confines all navigation within the frame by expecting any followed link or form submission to return a response including a matching frame tag:

html
<turbo-frame id="messages">
  <a href="/messages/expanded">
    Show all expanded messages in this frame.
  </a>

  <form action="/messages">
    Show response from this form within this frame.
  </form>
</turbo-frame>

Eager-loaded frame

Works like the basic frame, but the content is loaded from a remote src first.

html
<turbo-frame id="messages" src="/messages">
  Content will be replaced when /messages has been loaded.
</turbo-frame>

Lazy-loaded frame

Like an eager-loaded frame, but the content is not loaded from src until the frame is visible.

html
<turbo-frame id="messages" src="/messages" loading="lazy">
  Content will be replaced when the frame becomes visible and /messages has been loaded.
</turbo-frame>

Frame targeting the whole page by default

html
<turbo-frame id="messages" target="_top">
  <a href="/messages/1">
    Following link will replace the whole page, not this frame.
  </a>

  <a href="/messages/1" data-turbo-frame="_self">
    Following link will replace just this frame.
  </a>

  <form action="/messages">
    Submitting form will replace the whole page, not this frame.
  </form>
</turbo-frame>

Frame with overwritten navigation targets

html
<turbo-frame id="messages">
  <a href="/messages/1">
    Following link will replace this frame.
  </a>

  <a href="/messages/1" data-turbo-frame="_top">
    Following link will replace the whole page, not this frame.
  </a>

  <form action="/messages" data-turbo-frame="navigation">
    Submitting form will replace the navigation frame.
  </form>
</turbo-frame>

Frame that promotes navigations to Visits

html
<turbo-frame id="messages" data-turbo-action="advance">
  <a href="/messages?page=2">Advance history to next page</a>
  <a href="/messages?page=2" data-turbo-action="replace">Replace history with next page</a>
</turbo-frame>

Frame that will get reloaded with morphing during page refreshes & when they are explicitly reloaded with .reload()

html
<turbo-frame id="my-frame" refresh="morph" src="/my_frame">
</turbo-frame>

Attributes, properties, and functions

The <turbo-frame> element is a custom element with its own set of HTML attributes and JavaScript properties.

HTML Attributes

  • src accepts a URL or path value that controls navigation of the element

  • loading has two valid enumerated values: "eager" and "lazy". When loading="eager", changes to the src attribute will immediately navigate the element. When loading="lazy", changes to the src attribute will defer navigation until the element is visible in the viewport. The default value is eager.

  • busy is a boolean attribute toggled to be present when a <turbo-frame>-initiated request starts, and toggled false when the request ends

  • disabled is a boolean attribute that prevents any navigation when present

  • target refers to another <turbo-frame> element by ID to be navigated when a descendant <a> is clicked. When target="_top", navigate the window.

  • complete is a boolean attribute whose presence or absence indicates whether or not the <turbo-frame> element has finished navigating.

  • recurse allows the <turbo-frame> to load content that contains another nested frame. recurse refers to another <turbo-frame> element by ID, present in the frame's loaded contents. This can be used when Turbo needs to extract frame content from a response that doesn't contain the target frame directly, but contains another frame that can load the target frame.

    For example, imagine /frames.html contains:

html
<turbo-frame id="recursive" recurse="composer" src="recursive.html">
</turbo-frame>

And recursive.html contains:

html
<turbo-frame id="recursive">
  <turbo-frame id="composer">
    <a href="frames.html">Link</a>
  </turbo-frame>
</turbo-frame>

When Link navigates back to frames.html, Turbo needs to find the frame with ID composer in the response to update the current composer frame. Since there's no such frame in frames.html directly, Turbo finds the frame with recurse="composer", activates it to load its src (recursive.html), then searches for and extracts the composer frame from that loaded content to update the original frame.

  • autoscroll is a boolean attribute that controls whether or not to scroll a <turbo-frame> element (and its descendant <turbo-frame> elements) into view after loading. Control the scroll's vertical alignment by setting the data-autoscroll-block attribute to a valid Element.scrollIntoView({ block: "..." }) value: one of "end", "start", "center", or "nearest". When data-autoscroll-block is absent, the default value is "end". Control the scroll's behavior by setting the data-autoscroll-behavior attribute to a valid Element.scrollIntoView({ behavior: "..." }) value: one of "auto", or "smooth". When data-autoscroll-behavior is absent, the default value is "auto".

Properties

All <turbo-frame> elements can be controlled in JavaScript environments through instances of the FrameElement class.

  • FrameElement.src controls the pathname or URL to be loaded. Setting the src property will immediately navigate the element. When FrameElement.loaded is set to "lazy", changes to the src property will defer navigation until the element is visible in the viewport.

  • FrameElement.disabled is a boolean property that controls whether or not the element will load

  • FrameElement.loading controls the style (either "eager" or "lazy") that the frame will loading its content.

  • FrameElement.loaded references a Promise instance that resolves once the FrameElement's current navigation has completed.

  • FrameElement.complete is a read-only boolean property set to true when the FrameElement has finished navigating and false otherwise.

  • FrameElement.autoscroll controls whether or not to scroll the element into view once loaded

  • FrameElement.isActive is a read-only boolean property that indicates whether or not the frame is loaded and ready to be interacted with

  • FrameElement.isPreview is a read-only boolean property that returns true when the document that contains the element is a preview.

Functions

  • FrameElement.reload() is a function that reloads the frame element from its src.