Name

DataTransfer — a transfer of data via drag-and-drop

Synopsis

When the user performs a drag-and-drop operation, a sequence of events is fired on the drag source or the drop target (or both, if they are both in a browser window). These events are accompanied by an event object whose dataTransfer property (see Event) refers to a DataTransfer object. The DataTransfer object is the central object for any drag-and-drop operation: the drag source stores the data to be transferred in it, and the drop target extracts the transferred data from it. In addition, the DataTransfer object manages a negotiation between the drag source and drop target about whether the drag-and-drop should be a copy, move, or link operation.

The API described here was created by Microsoft for IE, and it has been at least partially implemented by other browsers. HTML5 standardizes the basic IE API. As this book goes to press, HTML5 has defined a new version of the API that defines the items property as an array-like object of DataTransferItem objects. This is an appealing and rational API, but since no browsers yet implement it, it is not documented here. Instead, this page documents the features that (mostly) work in current browsers. See Drag and Drop Events for further discussion of this quirky API.

Properties

string dropEffect

This property specifies the type of data transfer this object represents. It must have one of the values “none”, “copy”, “move”, or “link”. Typically, the drop target will set this property ...

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