Chapter 1. Introduction to HTML5 Canvas

HTML5 is the current iteration of HTML, the HyperText Markup Language. HTML was first standardized in 1993, and it was the fuel that ignited the World Wide Web. HTML is a way to define the contents of a web page using tags that appear within pointy brackets, < >.

HTML5 Canvas is an immediate mode bitmapped area of the screen that can be manipulated with JavaScript. Immediate mode refers to the way the canvas renders pixels on the screen. HTML5 Canvas completely redraws the bitmapped screen on every frame using Canvas API calls from JavaScript. As a programmer, your job is to set up the screen display before each frame is rendered so that the correct pixels will be shown.

This makes HTML5 Canvas very different from Flash, Silverlight, or SVG, which operate in retained mode. In this mode, a display list of objects is kept by the graphics renderer, and objects are displayed on the screen according to attributes set in code (i.e., the x position, y position, and alpha transparency of an object). This keeps the programmer away from low-level operations, but gives her less control over the final rendering of the bitmapped screen.

The basic HTML5 Canvas API includes a 2D context that allows a programmer to draw various shapes, render text, and display images directly onto a defined area of the browser window. You can apply colors; rotations; alpha transparencies; pixel manipulations; and various types of lines, curves, boxes, and fills to augment the shapes, text, and images you place onto the canvas.

In itself, the HTML5 Canvas 2D context is a display API used to render graphics on a bitmapped area, but there is very little in that context to create applications using the technology. By adding cross-browser-compatible JavaScript functionality for keyboard and mouse inputs, timer intervals, events, objects, classes, sound, math functions, etc., you can learn to take HTML5 Canvas and create stunning animations, applications, and games.

Here’s where this book comes in. We are going to break down the Canvas API into digestible parts and then put it back together, demonstrating how to use it to create applications. Many of the techniques you will learn in this book have been tried and used successfully on other platforms, and now we are applying them to this exciting new technology.

Browser Support for HTML5 Canvas

With the exception of Internet Explorer 8, HTML5 Canvas is supported in some way by most modern web browsers, with specific feature support growing on an almost daily basis. The best support seems to be from Google Chrome, followed closely by Safari, Firefox, and Opera. We will utilize a JavaScript library named modernizr.js that will help us figure out which browsers support which Canvas features. At the same time, if you are worried about Internet Explorer, version 9 promises to have support for Canvas. In the meantime, you can check out Google Chrome Frame (http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/), which delivers Canvas support for IE.

The Basic HTML Page

Before we get to Canvas, we need to talk a bit about the HTML5 standards we will be using to create our web pages.

HTML is the standard language used to construct pages on the World Wide Web. We will not spend much time on HTML, but it does form the basis of <canvas>, so we cannot skip it entirely.

A basic HTML page is divided into sections, commonly <head> and <body>. The new HTML5 specification adds a few new sections, such as <nav>, <article>, <header>, and <footer>.

The <head> tag usually contains information that will be used by the HTML <body> tags to create the HTML page. It is a standard convention to put JavaScript functions in the <head>, as you will see later when we discuss the <canvas> tag. There may be reasons to put some JavaScript in the <body>, but we will make every attempt to keep things simple by having all JavaScript in the <head>.

Basic HTML for a page might look like Example 1-1.

Example 1-1. A basic HTML page
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>CH1EX1: Basic Hello World HTML Page</title>
</head>
<body>
Hello World!
</body>
</html>

<!doctype html>

This tag informs the web browser to render the page in standards mode. According to the HTML5 spec from W3C, this is required for HTML5 documents. This tag simplifies a long history of oddities when it came to rendering HTML in different browsers. This should always be the first line of HTML in a document.

<html lang="en">

This is the <html> tag with the language referenced: for example, “en” = English. Some of the more common language values are:

Chinese – lang = “zh”
French – lang = “fr”
German – lang = “de”
Italian – lang = “it”
Japanese – lang = “ja”
Korean – lang = “ko”
Polish – lang = “pl”
Russian – lang = “ru”
Spanish (Castilian) – lang = “es”

<meta charset="UTF-8">

This tag tells the web browser which character-encoding method to use for the page. Unless you know what you’re doing, there is no need to change it. This is a required element for HTML5 pages.

<title>…</title>

This is the title that will be displayed in the browser window for the HTML page. This is a very important tag, as it is one of the main pieces of information a search engine uses to catalog the content on the HTML page.

A Simple HTML5 Page

Now let’s look at this page in a web browser (this would be a great time to get your tools together to start developing code). Open your chosen text editor, and get ready to use your preferred web browser: Safari, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, or IE.

  1. In your text editor, type in the code from Example 1-1.

  2. Save the code as CH1EX1.html in a directory of your choosing.

  3. Under the File menu in Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, you should find the option Open File. Click that selection. You should then see a box to open a file. (On Windows using Chrome, you might need to press Ctrl+O to open a file.)

  4. Locate the CH1EX1.html that you just created.

  5. Click Open.

You should see something similar to Figure 1-1.

HTML Hello World!
Figure 1-1. HTML Hello World!

Warning

This is one of only two examples in this entire book that will work with Internet Explorer 8 or earlier.

Basic HTML We Will Use in This Book

Many HTML tags can be used to create an HTML page. In past versions of HTML, tags that specifically instructed the web browser on how to render the HTML page (e.g., <font> and <center>) were very popular. However, as browser standards have become more restrictive in the past decade, those types of tags have been pushed aside, and the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) has been adopted as the primary way to style HTML content. Because this book is not about creating HTML pages (i.e., pages that don’t have Canvas in them), we are not going to discuss the inner workings of CSS.

We will focus on only two of the most basic HTML tags: <div> and <canvas>.

<div>

This is the main HTML tag that we will use in this book. We will use it to position <canvas> on the HTML page.

Example 1-2 uses a <div> tag to position the words “Hello World!” on the screen, as shown in Figure 1-2.

HTML5 Hello World! with a <div>
Figure 1-2. HTML5 Hello World! with a <div>
Example 1-2. HTML5 Hello World!
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>CH1EX2: Hello World HTML Page With A DIV </title>
</head>
<body>
<div style="position: absolute; top: 50px; left: 50px;">
Hello World!
</div>
</body>
</html>

The style="position: absolute; top: 50px; left: 50px;" code is an example of inline CSS in an HTML page. It tells the browser to render the content at the absolute position of 50 pixels from the top of the page, and 50 pixels from the left of the page.

<canvas>

Our work with <canvas> will benefit from using the absolute positioning method with <div>. We will place our <canvas> inside the <div> tag, and it will help us retrieve information, such as the relative position of the mouse pointer when it appears over a canvas.

The Document Object Model (DOM) and Canvas

The Document Object Model represents all the objects on an HTML page. It is language- and platform-neutral, allowing the content and style of the page to be updated after it is rendered in the web browser. The DOM is accessible through JavaScript, and has been a staple of JavaScript, DHTML, and CSS development since the late 1990s.

The canvas element itself is accessible through the DOM in a web browser via the Canvas 2D context, but the individual graphical elements created on Canvas are not accessible to the DOM. As we stated earlier, this is because Canvas works in immediate mode and does not have its own objects, only instructions on what to draw on any single frame.

Our first example will use the DOM to locate the <canvas> tag on the HTML5 page so that we can manipulate it with JavaScript. There are two specific DOM objects we will need to understand when we start using <canvas>: window and document.

The window object is the top level of the DOM. We will need to test this object to make sure all the assets and code have loaded before we can start our Canvas applications.

The document object contains all the HTML tags that are on the HTML page. We will need to look at this object to find the instance of <canvas> that manipulates with JavaScript.

JavaScript and Canvas

JavaScript, the programming language we will use to create Canvas applications, can be run inside nearly any web browser in existence. If you need a refresher on the topic, read Douglas Crockford’s JavaScript: The Good Parts (O’Reilly), which is a very popular and well-written reference on the subject.

JavaScript Frameworks and Libraries

There are many popular JavaScript frameworks that developers use to help get their JavaScript off the ground, including libraries such as jQuery, Processing.js, and others. We expect these frameworks to add robust support for Canvas in the next 6–12 months. In the meantime, we will focus on straight JavaScript to control the canvas. However, where appropriate, we will introduce you to frameworks and JavaScript libraries that will help augment Canvas development (e.g., Modernizr, JSColor, and WebGL).

Where Does JavaScript Go and Why?

Because we will create the programming logic for the Canvas in JavaScript, a question arises: where does that JavaScript go in the pages we have already created?

It’s a good idea to place your JavaScript in the <head> of your HTML page because it makes it easy to find. However, placing JavaScript there means that the entire HTML page needs to load before your JavaScript can work with the HTML. This also means that the JavaScript code will start to execute before the entire page loads. As a result, you will need to test to see whether the HTML page has loaded before you run your JavaScript program.

There has been a recent move to put JavaScript right before the </body> at the end of an HTML document to make sure the whole page loads before the JavaScript runs. However, because we are going to test to see whether the page has loaded in JavaScript before we run our <canvas> program, we will put our JavaScript in the traditional <head> location. If you are not comfortable with this, you can adapt the style of the code to your liking.

No matter where you put the code, you can place it inline in the HTML page or load an external .js file. The code for loading an external JavaScript file might look like this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="canvasapp.js"></script>

To make things simple, we will code our JavaScript inline in the HTML page. However, if you know what you are doing, saving an external file and loading it will work just as well.

Note

In HTML5 you no longer have to specify the script type.

HTML5 Canvas “Hello World!”

As we just mentioned, one of the first things we need to do when putting Canvas on an HTML5 page is test to see whether the entire page has loaded and all HTML elements are present before we start performing any operations. This will become essential when we start working with images and sounds in Canvas.

To do this, you need to work with events in JavaScript. Events are dispatched by objects when a defined event occurs. Other objects listen for events so they can do something based on the event. Some common events that an object in JavaScript might listen for are key presses, mouse movements, and when something has finished loading.

The first event we need to listen for is a window object’s load event, which occurs when the HTML page has finished loading.

To add a listener for an event, use the addEventListener() method that belongs to objects that are part of the DOM. Because window represents the HTML page, it is the top level of the DOM.

The addEventListener() function accepts three arguments:

Event: load

This is the named event for which we are adding a listener. Events for existing objects like window are already defined.

Event handler function: eventWindowLoaded()

Call this function when the event occurs. In our code, we will then call the canvasApp() function, which will start our main application execution.

useCapture: true or false

This sets the function to capture this type of event before it propagates lower in the DOM tree of objects. We will always set this to false.

Below is the final code we will use to test to see whether the window has loaded:

window.addEventListener("load", eventWindowLoaded, false);
function eventWindowLoaded () {
   canvasApp();
}

Alternatively, you can set up an event listener for the load event in a number of other ways:

window.onload = function()
   {
      canvasApp();
   }

or:

window.onload = canvasApp();

We will use the first method throughout this book.

Encapsulating Your JavaScript Code for Canvas

Now that we have created a way to test to see whether the HTML page has loaded, we can start creating our JavaScript application. Because JavaScript runs in an HTML page, it could be running with other JavaScript applications and code simultaneously. Usually, this does not cause any problems. However, there is a chance that your code might have variables or functions that conflict with other JavaScript code on the HTML page.

Canvas applications are a bit different from other apps that run in the web browser. Because Canvas executes its display in a defined region of the screen, its functionality is most likely self-contained, so it should not interfere with the rest of the page, and vice versa. You might also want to put multiple Canvas apps on the same page, so there must be some kind of separation of JavaScript when defining the code.

To avoid this issue, you can encapsulate your variables and functions by placing them inside another function. Functions in JavaScript are objects themselves, and objects in JavaScript can have both properties and methods. By placing a function inside another function, you are making the second function local in scope to the first function.

In our example, we are going to have the canvasApp() function that is called from the window load event contain our entire Canvas application. This “Hello World!” example will have one function named drawScreen(). As soon as canvasApp() is called, we will call drawScreen() immediately to draw our “Hello World!” text.

The drawScreen() function is now local to canvasApp(). Any variables or functions we create in canvasApp() will be local to drawScreen(), but not to the rest of the HTML page or other JavaScript applications that might be running.

Here is the sample code for how we will encapsulate functions and code for our Canvas applications:

function canvasApp() {
   drawScreen();

   ...

   function drawScreen() {

        ...

   }

}

Adding Canvas to the HTML Page

In the <body> section of the HTML page, add a <canvas> tag using code such as the following:

<canvas id="canvasOne" width="500" height="300">
 Your browser does not support HTML5 Canvas.
</canvas>

Now, let’s break this down to understand what we are doing. The <canvas> tag has three main attributes. In HTML, attributes are set within pointy brackets of an HTML tag. The three attributes we need to set are:

id

The id is the name we will use to reference this <canvas> tag in our JavaScript code. canvasOne is the name we will use.

width

The width, in pixels, of the canvas. The width will be 500 pixels.

height

The height, in pixels, of the canvas. The height will be 300 pixels.

Note

HTML5 elements, including canvas, have many more attributes: tabindex, title, class, accesskey, dir, draggable, hidden, etc.

Between the opening <canvas> and closing </canvas> tags, you can put text that will be displayed if the browser executing the HTML page does not support Canvas. For our Canvas applications, we will use the text “Your browser does not support HTML5 Canvas.” However, you can adjust this text to say anything.

Using document to reference the canvas element in JavaScript

We will now make use of the DOM to reference the <canvas> we defined in HTML. Recall that the document object represents every element of an HTML page after it has loaded.

We need a reference to the Canvas object so that we will know where to display the Canvas API calls we will make from JavaScript.

First, we will define a new variable named theCanvas that will hold the reference to the Canvas object.

Next, we retrieve a reference to canvasOne by calling the getElementById() function of document, and passing the name canvasOne, which we defined as the id of the <canvas> tag we created in the HTML page:

var theCanvas = document.getElementById("canvasOne");

Testing to See Whether the Browser Supports Canvas

Now that we have a reference to the canvas element on the HTML page, we need to test to see whether it contains a context. The Canvas context refers to the drawing surface defined by a web browser to support Canvas. Simply put, if the context does not exist, neither does the canvas. There are several ways to test this. This first test looks to see whether the getContext method exists before we call it using Canvas, as we have already defined it in the HTML page:

if (!theCanvas || !theCanvas.getContext) {
   return;
}

Actually, this tests two things. First, it tests to see whether theCanvas does not contain false (the value returned by document.getElementById() if the named id does not exist). Then, it tests whether the getContext() function exists.

The return statement breaks out and stops execution if the test fails.

Another method—popularized by Mark Pilgrim on his HTML5 website, http://diveintohtml5.org—uses a function with a test of a dummy canvas created for the sole purpose of seeing whether browser support exists:

function canvasSupport () {
    return !!document.createElement('testcanvas').getContext;
}
function canvasApp() {
   if (!canvasSupport) {
      return;
  }

}

Our favorite method is to use the modernizr.js library, which you can find here: http://www.modernizr.com/. Modernizr—an easy-to-use, lightweight library for testing support for various web-based technologies—creates a set of static Booleans that you can test against to see whether Canvas is supported.

To include modernizr.js in your HTML page, download the code from http://www.modernizr.com/ and then include the external .js file in your HTML page:

<script src="modernizr-1.6.min.js"></script>

To test for Canvas, change the canvasSupport() function to look like this:

function canvasSupport () {
   return Modernizr.canvas;
}

We are going to use the modernizr.js method because we think it offers the best approach for testing whether Canvas is supported in web browsers.

Retrieving the 2D Context

Finally, we need to get a reference to the 2D context so we can manipulate it. HTML5 Canvas is designed to work with multiple contexts, including a proposed 3D context. However, for the purposes of this book, we only need to get the 2D context:

var context = theCanvas.getContext("2d");

The drawScreen() Function

It’s time to create actual Canvas API code. Every operation we perform on Canvas will be through the context object, as it references the object on the HTML page.

We will delve into writing text, graphics, and images to HTML5 Canvas in later chapters, so for now, we will only spend a very short time on the code of the drawScreen() function.

The “screen” here is really the defined drawing area of the canvas, not the whole browser window. We refer to it as such because within the context of the games and applications you will write, it is effectively the “window” or “screen” into the canvas display that you will be manipulating.

The first thing we want to do is clear the drawing area. The following two lines of code draw a yellow box on the screen that is the same size as the canvas. fillStyle() sets the color, and fillRect() creates a rectangle and puts it on the screen:

context.fillStyle = "#ffffaa";
context.fillRect(0, 0, 500, 300);

Note

Notice that we are calling functions of the context. There are no screen objects, color objects, or anything else. This is an example of the immediate mode we described earlier.

Again, we will discuss the text functions of Canvas in the next chapter, but here is a short preview of the code we will use to put the text “Hello World!” on the screen.

First, we set the color of the text in the same way we set the color of the rectangle:

context.fillStyle  = "#000000";

Then we set the font size and weight:

context.font = "20px _sans";

Next, we set the vertical alignment of the font:

context.textBaseline = "top";

Finally, we print our test on the screen by calling the fillText() method of the context object. The three parameters of this method are text string, x position, and y position:

context.fillText  ("Hello World!", 195, 80);

Let’s add some graphics to our “Hello World!” text. First, let’s load in an image and display it. We will dive into images and image manipulation in Chapter 4, but for now, let’s just get an image on the screen. To display an image on the canvas, you need to create an instance of the Image() object, and set the Image.src property to the name of the image to load.

Note

You can also use another canvas or a video as the image to display. We will discuss these topics in Chapters 4 and 6.

Before you display it, you need to wait for the image to load. Create a callback() function for the Image load event by setting the onload function of the Image object. callback() will be executed when the onload event occurs. When the image has loaded, you then call context.drawImage(), passing three parameters to put it on the canvas: Image object, x position, and y position:

var helloWorldImage = new Image();
helloWorldImage.src = "helloworld.gif";
helloWorldImage.onload = function () {
   context.drawImage(helloWorldImage, 160, 130);
}

Finally, let’s draw a box around the text and the image. To draw a box with no fill, use the context.StrokeStyle() method to set a color for the stroke (the border of the box), and then call the context.strokeRect() method to draw the rectangle border. The four parameters for the strokeRect() method are the upper left x and y coordinates, and the lower right x and y coordinates:

context.strokeStyle = "#000000";
context.strokeRect(5,  5, 490, 290);

The full code for the HTML5 Hello World! application is shown in Example 1-3, and its results are illustrated in Figure 1-3.

Example 1-3. HTML5 Canvas Hello World!
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>CH1EX3: Your First Canvas Application </title>
<script src="modernizr-1.6.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.addEventListener("load", eventWindowLoaded, false);

var Debugger = function () { };
Debugger.log = function (message) {
   try {
      console.log(message);
   } catch (exception) {
      return;
   }
}

function eventWindowLoaded () {
   canvasApp();
}

function canvasSupport () {
    return Modernizr.canvas;
}

function canvasApp () {

        if (!canvasSupport()) {
          return;
        }

      var theCanvas = document.getElementById("canvasOne");
      var context = theCanvas.getContext("2d");

      Debugger.log("Drawing Canvas");

        function drawScreen() {
         //background
         context.fillStyle = "#ffffaa";
         context.fillRect(0, 0, 500, 300);

         //text
         context.fillStyle  = "#000000";
         context.font = "20px _sans";
         context.textBaseline = "top";
         context.fillText  ("Hello World!", 195, 80 );

         //image
         var helloWorldImage = new Image();
         helloWorldImage.src = "helloworld.gif";
         helloWorldImage.onload = function () {
            context.drawImage(helloWorldImage, 160, 130);
         }

         //box
         context.strokeStyle = "#000000";
         context.strokeRect(5,  5, 490, 290);

      }

      drawScreen();

}

</script>
</head>
<body>
<div style="position: absolute; top: 50px; left: 50px;">
<canvas id="canvasOne" width="500" height="300">
 Your browser does not support HTML5 Canvas.
</canvas>
</div>
</body>
</html>
HTML5 Canvas Hello World!
Figure 1-3. HTML5 Canvas Hello World!

Debugging with Console.log

There is one more thing to discuss before we explore bigger and better things beyond “Hello World!” In this book, we have implemented a very simple debugging methodology using the console.log functionality of modern web browsers. This function lets you log text messages to the JavaScript console to help find problems (or opportunities!) with your code. Any browser that has a JavaScript console (Chrome, Opera, Safari, Firefox with Firebug installed) can make use of console.log. However, browsers without console.log support throw a nasty error.

To handle this error, we use a wrapper around console.log that only makes the call if the function is supported. The wrapper creates a class named Debugger, and then creates a static function named Debugger.log that can be called from anywhere in your code, like this:

Debugger.log("Drawing Canvas");

Here is the code for the console.log() functionality:

var Debugger = function () { };
Debugger.log = function (message) {
   try {
      console.log(message);
   } catch (exception) {
      return;
   }
}

The 2D Context and the Current State

The HTML5 2D context (the CanvasRenderingContext2D object), retrieved by a call to the getContext() method of the Canvas object, is where all the action takes place. The CanvasRenderingContext2D contains all the methods and properties we need to draw onto the canvas. The CanvasRenderingContext2D (or context, as we will call it hereafter) uses a Cartesian coordinate system with 0,0 at the upper left and corner of the canvas, and coordinates increasing in value to the left and down.

However, all of these properties and methods are used in conjunction with current state, a concept that must be grasped before you can really understand how to work with HTML5 Canvas. The current state is actually a stack of drawing states that apply globally to the entire canvas. You will manipulate these states when drawing on the canvas. These states include:

Transformation matrix

Methods for scale, rotate, transform, and translate

Clipping region

Created with the clip() method

Properties of the context

Properties include strokeStyle, fillStyle, globalAlpha, lineWidth, lineCap, lineJoin, miterLimit, shadowOffsetX, shadowOffsetY, shadowBlur, shadowColor, globalCompositeOperation, font, textAlign, and textBaseline.

Don’t worry; these should not look familiar to you just yet. We will discuss these properties in depth in the next three chapters.

Remember earlier in this chapter when we discussed immediate mode versus retained mode? The canvas is an immediate mode drawing surface, which means everything needs to be redrawn every time something changes. There are some advantages to this; for example, global properties make it very easy to apply effects to the entire screen. Once you get your head around it, the act of redrawing the screen every time there is an update makes the process of drawing to the canvas straightforward and simple.

On the other hand, retained mode is when a set of objects is stored by a drawing surface and manipulated with a display list. Flash and Silverlight work in this mode. Retained mode can be very useful for creating applications that rely on multiple objects with their own independent states. Many of the same applications that could make full use of the canvas (games, activities, animations) are often easier to code with a retained mode drawing surface, especially for beginners.

Our challenge is to take advantage of the immediate mode drawing surface, while adding functionality to our code to help it act more like it works in retained mode. Throughout this book we will discuss strategies that will help take this immediate mode operation and make it easier to manipulate through code.

The HTML5 Canvas Object

Recall that the Canvas object is created by placing the <canvas> tag in the <body> portion of an HTML page. You can also create an instance of a canvas in code like this:

var theCanvas = document.createElement("canvas");

The Canvas object has two associated properties and methods that can be accessed through JavaScript: width and height. These tell you the current width and height of the canvas rendered on the HTML page. It is important to note that they are not read-only; i.e., they can be updated in code and changed on an HTML page. What does this mean? It means you can dynamically resize the canvas on the HTML page without reloading.

Note

You can also use CSS styles to change the scale of the canvas. Unlike resizing, scaling takes the current canvas bitmapped area and resamples it to fit into the size specified by the width and height attributes of the CSS style. For example, to scale the canvas to a 400×400 area, you might use this CSS style:

style="width: 400px; height:400px"

We include an example of scaling the Canvas with a transformation matrix in Chapter 3.

There are also two public methods for the Canvas object. The first is getContext(), which we used earlier in this chapter. We will continue to use it throughout this book to retrieve a reference to the Canvas 2D context so we can draw onto the canvas. The second property is toDataURL(). This method will return a string of data that represents the bitmapped image of the Canvas object as it is currently rendered. It’s like a snapshot of the screen. By supplying different MIME types as a parameter, you can retrieve the data in different formats. The basic format is an image/png, but image/jpeg and other formats can be retrieved. We will use the toDataURL() in the next application to export an image of the canvas into another browser window.

Another Example: Guess The Letter

Now we will take a quick look at a more involved example of a “Hello World!”-type application, the game “Guess The Letter.” We’ve included this example to illustrate how much more Canvas programming is done in JavaScript than in the Canvas API.

In this game, shown in Figure 1-4, the player’s job is to guess the letter of the alphabet the computer has chosen randomly. The game keeps track of how many guesses the player has made, lists the letters he has already guessed, and tells the player whether he needs to guess higher (toward Z) or lower (toward A).

HTML5 Canvas “Guess The Letter” game
Figure 1-4. HTML5 Canvas “Guess The Letter” game

How the Game Works

This game is set up with the same basic structure as “Hello World!” canvasApp() is the main function, and all other functions are defined as local to canvasApp(). We use a drawScreen() function to render text on the canvas. However, there are some other functions included as well, which are described next.

The “Guess The Letter” Game Variables

Here is a rundown of the variables we will use in the game. They are all defined and initialized in canvasApp(), so they have scope to the encapsulated functions that we define locally.

guesses

This variable holds the number of times the player has pressed a letter. The lower the number, the better he has done in the game.

message

The content of this variable is displayed to give the user instructions on how to play.

letters

This array holds one of each letter of the alphabet. We will use this array to both randomly choose a secret letter for the game, and to figure out the relative position of the letter in the alphabet.

today

This variable holds the current date. It is displayed on the screen but has no other purpose.

letterToGuess

This variable holds the current game’s secret letter that needs to be guessed.

higherOrLower

This variable holds the text “Higher” or “Lower” depending on where the last guessed letter is in relation to the secret letter. If the secret letter is closer to “a,” we give the “Lower” instruction. If the letter is closer to “z,” we give the “Higher” instruction.

lettersGuessed

This array holds the current set of letters the player has guessed already. We will print this list on the screen to help the player remember what letters he has already chosen.

gameOver

This variable is set to false until the player wins. We will use this to know when to put the “You Win” message on the screen, and to keep the player from guessing after he has won.

Here is the code:

   var guesses = 0;
   var message = "Guess The Letter From a (lower) to z (higher)";
   var letters = [
               "a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k","l","m","n","o",
               "p","q","r","s","t","u","v","w","x","y","z"
               ];
   var today = new Date();
   var letterToGuess = "";
   var higherOrLower = "";
   var lettersGuessed;
   var gameOver = false;

The initGame() Function

The initGame() function sets up the game for the player. The two most important blocks of code are as follows. This code finds a random letter from the letters array and stores it in the letterToGuess variable:

var letterIndex = Math.floor(Math.random() * letters.length);
letterToGuess = letters[letterIndex];

This code adds an event listener to the window object of the DOM to listen for the keyboard keyup event. When a key is pressed, the eventKeyPressed event handler is called to test the letter pressed:

window.addEventListener("keyup",eventKeyPressed,true);

Here is the full code for the function:

function initGame() {
   var letterIndex = Math.floor(Math.random() * letters.length);
   letterToGuess = letters[letterIndex];
   guesses = 0;
   lettersGuessed = [];
   gameOver = false;
   window.addEventListener("keyup",eventKeyPressed,true);
   drawScreen();
}

The eventKeyPressed() Function

This function, called when the player presses a key, contains most of the action in this game. Every event handler function in JavaScript is passed an event object that has information about the event that has taken place. We use the e argument to hold that object.

The first test we make is to see whether the gameOver variable is false. If so, we continue to test the key that was pressed by the player; the next two lines of code are used for that purpose. The first line of code gets the key-press value from the event, and converts it to an alphabetic letter that we can test with the letter stored in letterToGuess:

var letterPressed = String.fromCharCode(e.keyCode);

The next line of code converts the letter to lowercase so that we can test uppercase letters if the player unintentionally has Caps Lock on:

letterPressed = letterPressed.toLowerCase();

Next, we increase the guesses count to display, and use the Array.push() method to add the letter to the lettersGuessed array:

guesses++;
lettersGuessed.push(letterPressed);

Now it is time to test the current game state to give feedback to the player. First, we test to see whether letterPressed is equal to letterToGuess. If so, the player has won the game:

if (letterPressed == letterToGuess) {
   gameOver = true;

If the player has not won, we need to get the index of letterToGuess and the index of letterPressed in the letters array. We are going to use these values to figure out whether we should display “Higher,” “Lower,” or “That is not a letter.” To do this, we use the indexOf() array method to get the relative index of each letter. Because we alphabetized the letters in the array, it is very easy to test which message to display:

} else {
   letterIndex = letters.indexOf(letterToGuess);
   guessIndex = letters.indexOf(letterPressed);

Now we make the test. First, if guessIndex is less than zero, it means that the call to indexOf() returned -1, and the key press was not a letter. We then display an error message:

if (guessIndex < 0) {
   higherOrLower = "That is not a letter";

The rest of the tests are simple. If guessIndex is greater than letterIndex, we set the higherOrLower text to “Lower.” Conversely, if guessIndex is less than letterIndex, we set the higherOrLower test to “Higher”:

   } else if (guessIndex > letterIndex) {
      higherOrLower = "Lower";
   } else {
      higherOrLower = "Higher";
   }

}

Finally, we call drawScreen() to paint the screen:

drawScreen();

Here is the full code for the function:

function eventKeyPressed(e) {
      if (!gameOver) {
         var letterPressed = String.fromCharCode(e.keyCode);
         letterPressed = letterPressed.toLowerCase();
         guesses++;
         lettersGuessed.push(letterPressed);

         if (letterPressed == letterToGuess) {
            gameOver = true;
         } else {

            letterIndex = letters.indexOf(letterToGuess);
            guessIndex = letters.indexOf(letterPressed);
            Debugger.log(guessIndex);
            if (guessIndex < 0) {
               higherOrLower = "That is not a letter";
            } else if (guessIndex > letterIndex) {
               higherOrLower = "Lower";
            } else {
               higherOrLower = "Higher";
            }

         }
         drawScreen();
        }
   }

The drawScreen() Function

Now we get to drawScreen(). The good news is that we have seen almost all of this before—there are only a few differences from “Hello World!” For example, we paint multiple variables on the screen using the Canvas Text API. We only set context.textBaseline = 'top'; once for all the text we are going to display. Also, we change the color using context.fillStyle, and the font with context.font.

The most interesting thing we display here is the content of the lettersGuessed array. On the canvas, the array is printed as a set of comma-separated values, like this:

Letters Guessed: p,h,a,d

To print this value, all we do is use the toString() method of the lettersGuessed array, which prints out the values of an array as—you guessed it—comma-separated values:

context.fillText  ("Letters Guessed: " + lettersGuessed.toString(), 10, 260);

We also test the gameOver variable. If it is true, we put You Got It! on the screen in giant 40px text so the user knows he has won.

Here is the full code for the function:

function drawScreen() {
      //Background
      context.fillStyle = "#ffffaa";
      context.fillRect(0, 0, 500, 300);
      //Box
      context.strokeStyle = "#000000";
      context.strokeRect(5,  5, 490, 290);

      context.textBaseline = "top";
      //Date
      context.fillStyle = "#000000";
      context.font = "10px _sans";
      context.fillText  (today, 150 ,10);
      //Message
      context.fillStyle = "#FF0000";
      context.font = "14px _sans";
      context.fillText  (message, 125, 30);
     //Guesses
      context.fillStyle = "#109910";
      context.font = "16px _sans";
      context.fillText  ('Guesses: ' + guesses, 215, 50);
      //Higher Or Lower
      context.fillStyle = "#000000";
      context.font = "16px _sans";
      context.fillText  ("Higher Or Lower: " + higherOrLower, 150,125);
      //Letters Guessed
      context.fillStyle = "#FF0000";
      context.font = "16px _sans";
      context.fillText  ("Letters Guessed: " + lettersGuessed.toString(), 10, 260);
      if (gameOver) {
         context.fillStyle = "#FF0000";
         context.font = "40px _sans";
         context.fillText  ("You Got It!", 150, 180);
      }
   }

Exporting Canvas to an Image

Earlier, we briefly discussed the toDataUrL() property of the Canvas object. We are going to use that property to let the user create an image of the game screen at any time. This acts almost like a screen-capture utility for games made on Canvas.

We need to create a button in the HTML page that the user can press to get the screen capture. We will add this button to <form> and give it the id createImageData:

<form>
<input type="button" id="createImageData" value="Export Canvas Image">
</form>

In the init() function, we retrieve a reference to that form element by using the getElementById() method of the document object. We then set an event handler for the button “click” event as the function createImageDataPressed():

var formElement = document.getElementById("createImageData");
formElement.addEventListener('click', createImageDataPressed, false);

In canvasApp(), we define the createImageDataPressed() function as an event handler. This function calls window.open(), passing the return value of the Canvas.toDataUrl() method as the source for the window. Since this data forms a valid PNG, the image is displayed in the new window:

function createImageDataPressed(e) {

   window.open(theCanvas.toDataURL(),"canvasImage","left=0,top=0,width=" + 
   theCanvas.width + ",height=" + theCanvas.height +",toolbar=0,resizable=0");
   }

Note

We will discuss this process in depth in Chapter 3.

The Final Game Code

Example 1-4 shows the full code for the Guess The Letter game.

Example 1-4. Guess The Letter game
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>CH1EX4: Guesss The Letter Game</title>
<script src="modernizr-1.6.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">

window.addEventListener('load', eventWindowLoaded, false);

var Debugger = function () { };
Debugger.log = function (message) {
   try {
      console.log(message);
   } catch (exception) {
      return;
   }
}

function eventWindowLoaded() {

   canvasApp();
}

function canvasSupport () {
     return Modernizr.canvas;
}

function eventWindowLoaded() {

   canvasApp();
}

function canvasApp() {
   var guesses = 0;
   var message = "Guess The Letter From a (lower) to z (higher)";
   var letters = [
               "a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k","l","m","n","o",
               "p","q","r","s","t","u","v","w","x","y","z"
               ];
   var today = new Date();
   var letterToGuess = "";
   var higherOrLower = "";
   var lettersGuessed;
   var gameOver = false;

   if (!canvasSupport()) {
          return;
        }

   var theCanvas = document.getElementById("canvasOne");
   var context = theCanvas.getContext("2d");

   initGame();

   function initGame() {
      var letterIndex = Math.floor(Math.random() * letters.length);
      letterToGuess = letters[letterIndex];
      guesses = 0;
      lettersGuessed = [];
      gameOver = false;
      window.addEventListener("keyup",eventKeyPressed,true);
      var formElement = document.getElementById("createImageData");
      formElement.addEventListener('click', createImageDataPressed, false);
      drawScreen();
   }

   function eventKeyPressed(e) {
      if (!gameOver) {
         var letterPressed = String.fromCharCode(e.keyCode);
         letterPressed = letterPressed.toLowerCase();
         guesses++;
         lettersGuessed.push(letterPressed);

         if (letterPressed == letterToGuess) {
            gameOver = true;
         } else {

            letterIndex = letters.indexOf(letterToGuess);
            guessIndex = letters.indexOf(letterPressed);
            Debugger.log(guessIndex);
            if (guessIndex < 0) {
               higherOrLower = "That is not a letter";
            } else if (guessIndex > letterIndex) {
               higherOrLower = "Lower";
            } else {
               higherOrLower = "Higher";
            }

         }
         drawScreen();
        }
   }

   function drawScreen() {
      //Background
      context.fillStyle = "#ffffaa";
      context.fillRect(0, 0, 500, 300);
      //Box
      context.strokeStyle = "#000000";
      context.strokeRect(5,  5, 490, 290);
      context.textBaseline = "top";
      //Date
      context.fillStyle = "#000000";
      context.font = "10px _sans";
      context.fillText  (today, 150 ,10);
      //Message
      context.fillStyle = "#FF0000";
      context.font = "14px _sans";
      context.fillText  (message, 125, 30);
      //Guesses
      context.fillStyle = "#109910";
      context.font = "16px _sans";
      context.fillText  ('Guesses: ' + guesses, 215, 50);
      //Higher Or Lower
      context.fillStyle = "#000000";
      context.font = "16px _sans";
      context.fillText  ("Higher Or Lower: " + higherOrLower, 150,125);
      //Letters Guessed
      context.fillStyle = "#FF0000";
      context.font = "16px _sans";
      context.fillText  ("Letters Guessed: " + lettersGuessed.toString(), 10, 260);
      if (gameOver) {
         context.fillStyle = "#FF0000";
         context.font = "40px _sans";
         context.fillText  ("You Got It!", 150, 180);
      }
   }

   function createImageDataPressed(e) {

      window.open(theCanvas.toDataURL(),"canvasImage","left=0,top=0,width=" + 
      theCanvas.width + ",height=" + theCanvas.height +",toolbar=0,resizable=0"); 
   }

}

</script>
</head>
<body>
<div style="position: absolute; top: 50px; left: 50px;">
<canvas id="canvasOne" width="500" height="300">
 Your browser does not support HTML5 Canvas.
</canvas>
<form>
<input type="button" id="createImageData" value="Export Canvas Image">
</form>
</div>
</body>
</html>

What’s Next

So now you should have a basic understanding of the HTML and JavaScript we will use to render and control HTML5 Canvas on an HTML page. In the next chapter, we will take this information and expand on it to create an interactive application that uses the canvas to render information on the screen.

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