In a previous post we introduced the GeometryUtils interface and the getBoxQuads() API for retrieving the CSS box geometry of a DOM node. GeometryUtils also takes care of another important problem: converting coordinates reliably from one DOM node to another. For example, you might want to find the bounding-box of one element relative to another element, or you might want to convert event coordinates from the viewport to some arbitrary element.

Existing APIs

Until now, simple cases could be handled using getBoundingClientRect() and some math, but complex cases (e.g. involving CSS transforms) were almost impossible to handle using standard APIs. The nonstandard APIs webkitConvertPointToPage and webkitConvertPageToPoint are a big improvement, but apart from not being standardized, they’re not as powerful as they need to be. In particular it’s more convenient and more robust to provide an API for directly converting coordinates from one element to another.[1]

New APIs

GeometryUtils introduces three new methods for coordinate conversion:

• to.convertPointFromNode(point, from) converts a a point relative to the top-left of the first border-box of “from” to a point relative to the top-left of the first border-box of “to”. The point is a DOMPointInit, which means you can pass a DOMPoint or a JS object such as {x:0, y:0}.
• to.convertRectFromNode(rect, from) converts a a DOMRect relative to the top-left of the first border-box of “from” to a DOMQuad relative to the top-left of the first border-box of “to” by converting the vertices of the DOMRect. It converts to a DOMQuad to ensure that the result is accurate even if it needs to be rotated or skewed by CSS transforms.
• to.convertQuadFromNode(quad, from) converts a DOMQuad from “from” to “to”. It’s just like convertRectFromNode except for taking a DOMQuad.

As with getBoxQuads, a node can be an Element, TextNode or Document; when a Document is used, the coordinates are relative to the document’s viewport.

Example:

var p1 = document.convertPointFromNode({
    x:0, y:0
  }, document.getElementById("e")
);
// p1.x == 100, p1.y == 100

var p2 = document.convertPointFromNode({
    x:0, y:0
  }, document.getElementById("d")
);
// p2.x == 150, p2.y == 150 - 50*sqrt(2) (approx)

p2 = document.getElementById("e").convertPointFromNode({
    x:0, y:0
  }, document.getElementById("d")
);
// p2.x == 50, p2.y == 50 - 50*sqrt(2) (approx)

var q1 = document.convertRectFromNode(
  new DOMRect(0, 0, 50, 50),
  document.getElementById("e")
);
// q1.p1.x == 100, q1.p1.y == 100
// q1.p2.x == 150, q1.p2.y == 100
// q1.p3.x == 150, q1.p3.y == 150
// q1.p4.x == 100, q1.p4.y == 150

var q2 = document.convertQuadFromNode(
  new DOMQuad({
    x:60, y:50
  }, {
    x:90, y:50
  }, {
    x:100, y:100
  }, {
    x:50, y:100
  }),
  document.getElementById("e")
);
// q2.p1.x == 100, q2.p1.y == 100
// q2.p2.x == 150, q2.p2.y == 100
// q2.p3.x == 140, q2.p3.y == 150
// q2.p4.x == 110, q2.p4.y == 150

Sometimes it’s useful to convert to or from an element’s CSS content-box, padding-box or margin-box. This is supported via an optional ConvertCoordinateOptions dictionary with the following options:

• fromBox: one of "content", "padding", "border" or "margin", selecting which CSS box of the first fragment of the from node the input point(s) are relative to.
• toBox: selects which CSS box of the first fragment of the to node the returned point(s) are relative to.

As a special case, this makes it easy to convert points between different
CSS box types of the same element. For example, to convert a point from an
element’s border-box to be relative to its content-box, use
element.convertPointFromNode(point, element, {toBox:"content"}).

Example:

var p1 = document.convertPointFromNode({
    x:0, y:0
  }, document.getElementById("e"),
  {fromBox:"content"}
);
// p1.x == 120, p1.y == 120

p1 = document.getElementById("e").convertPointFromNode({
    x:120, y:120
  }, document,
  {toBox:"content"}
);
// p1.x == 0, p1.y == 0

p1 = document.getElementById("e").convertPointFromNode({
    x:0, y:0
  }, document.getElementById("e"),
  {fromBox:"content"}
);
// p1.x == 20, p1.y == 20

p1 = document.getElementById("e").convertPointFromNode({
    x:20, y:20
  }, document.getElementById("e"),
  {toBox:"content"}
);
// p1.x == 0, p1.y == 0

These APIs are available in Firefox nightly builds and should be released in Firefox 31. Firefox is the first browser to implement these APIs.

Footnote

[1] Consider the following example:

  
...<>
  
...<>

In this case, converting a point relative to a to be relative to b by converting first to page coordinates and then back to b doesn’t work, because the scale(0) maps every point in a to a single point in the page.