CKEditor instance already exists

Question

I am using jquery dialogs to present forms (fetched via AJAX). On some forms I am using a CKEditor for the textareas. The editor displays fine on the first load.

Whe

Answer 1

To support dynamic (Ajax) loading of forms (without page refreshes between) which contain textareas with the same (same form is called again) or different ID's (previously unloaded form) and convert them to CKEditor elements I did the following (using the JQuery adapter):

After the page has finished every Ajax call that delivers a textarea to be converted, I make a call to the following function:

setupCKeditor()

This looks like this (it assumes your textareas to be converted to RTE's have class="yourCKClass"):

    /* Turns textAreas into TinyMCE Rich Text Editors where
 * class: tinymce applied to textarea.
 */
function setupCKeditor(){

    // define editor configuration      
    var config = {skin : 'kama'};

    // Remove and recreate any existing CKEditor instances
    var count = 0;
    if (CKEDITOR.instances !== 'undefined') {
        for(var i in CKEDITOR.instances) {

            var oEditor   = CKEDITOR.instances[i];
            var editorName = oEditor.name;

             // Get the editor data.
            var data = $('#'+editorName).val();

            // Check if current instance in loop is the same as the textarea on current page
            if ($('textarea.yourCKClass').attr('id') == editorName) {
                if(CKEDITOR.instances[editorName]) {

                    // delete and recreate the editor
                    delete CKEDITOR.instances[editorName];
                    $('#'+editorName).ckeditor(function() { },config);
                    count++;

                }
            }   


        }
    }

    // If no editor's exist in the DOM, create any that are needed.             
    if (count == 0){

        $('textarea.yourCKClass').each( function(index) {

                var editorName = $(this).attr('id');
                $('#'+editorName).ckeditor(function() { $('#'+editorName).val(data); },config);

            });

    }


}

I should mention that the line:

$('#'+editorName).ckeditor(function() { $('#'+editorName).val(data); },config);

could (and should) be simply:

$('#'+editorName).ckeditor(function() { },config);

however I found that the editor would often show the correct content for a second after loading and them empty the editor of the desired content. So that line with the callback code forces the CKEditor content to be the same as the originating textarea content. Causes a flicker when used. If you can avoid using it, do so..