Prevent MatDialog From Closing When Clicked Outside with Pending Changes

Описание: Learn how to effectively prevent a `MatDialog` from closing in Angular Material when there are pending changes, ensuring users don't accidentally lose their input.
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/70304242/ asked by the user 'Teo230' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/11525436/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/70304544/ provided by the user 'Nitika' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/6580744/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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How to Prevent MatDialog from Closing on Background Clicks with Pending Changes

In modern web applications, it's crucial to ensure a smooth user experience, especially when it comes to handling forms or dialogs. One common scenario developers face is wanting to keep a dialog open when a user clicks outside it, particularly if there are unsaved changes. In this post, we’ll explore how to accomplish this in an Angular application that utilizes Angular Material’s MatDialog component.

The Problem: Safeguarding Unsaved Changes

Imagine users are filling out a form inside a dialog. If they accidentally click outside the dialog, they'd typically lose their input if the dialog closes. This can result in frustration, especially if they have filled out considerable information. To mitigate this, we need a way to prevent the dialog from closing when there are pending changes.

The Solution: Implementing Controlled Closing Behavior

To achieve this, we will use Angular's MatDialog with some specific settings to control its closing behavior based on user actions. Below are the steps you should follow:

Step 1: Open the Dialog with disableClose Set to True

When you open your dialog, set the disableClose property to true. This prevents the dialog from closing on any background click or escape key press by default.

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By doing this, you immediately prevent the dialog from closing automatically, allowing you to add your custom logic.

Step 2: Subscribe to Background Clicks

Next, you'll want to listen for clicks on the backdrop (the area outside the dialog). Here's how you can do this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

In this code, pendingChanges is a boolean that you define based on your application's logic. It should reflect whether there are unsaved changes in the dialog at the time of the backdrop click.

Additional Considerations

Pending Changes Logic: Ensure you implement proper logic to track whether changes are pending. This usually involves setting pendingChanges to true when fields are modified and to false when the user saves or discards changes.

User Feedback: Consider providing feedback to your users when they attempt to close the dialog with unsaved changes. This could be a simple alert or confirmation dialog asking if they really want to proceed.

Accessibility: When implementing custom dialog behavior, always keep accessibility in mind. Ensure that keyboard and screen reader users can interact with the dialog as expected.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can effectively prevent an Angular Material MatDialog from closing when there are pending changes, thereby protecting user inputs from accidental loss. Being conscious of how users interact with your application and providing safeguards will lead to a significantly improved user experience.

Incorporating this functionality into your application will help ensure your users feel secure when making changes, knowing that their inputs aren’t lost with an accidental click. Consider implementing these strategies in your next project, and watch how they improve user satisfaction!