I have a page with a list of blog posts.
What would be the best way to open the post content on the same page in a modal, without redirecting to the single post page?
What I thought it's to make it in vanilla JS, to have an event on each post, have the data for all the posts in some array or each inside an attribute and when the event is triggered, fill the data for that post in the modal and show it. Maybe I can use AlpineJS for this.
Seems rudimentary to have it in vanilla, is there a better way to do it?
I also thought about Livewire, but I'm afraid it will be slow, have looked on some videos on YT, and when the button was clicked, it was visible when the data was filling in, looked slow.
Have thought also to make API calls, but I'd have to make the authentication work on that specific route, which would complicate it too much I guess, since it's going to be used just for this page.
What are your thoughts, how would you do it?
All your suggestions would work. Just depends on what you prefer and are able to implement. Also, think around opening the Post content in a modal, how much data do you want to load in the modal? Such questions will assist in you deciding the best way to design the post page.
Related
Okay I do not know how to explain this to you, It may be just my internet, or maybe my site is slower, or they really have a technique for doing this.
If you visit Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, Twitter, and if you click on links or any actions on those websites, the url changes but the browser tab doesn't show any loading circle.
How do they do that?
I am pretty sure my website is fast enought and at times it loads even faster than the bigger sites, but mine shows the loading circle on the browser tab.
Okay so I found the answer. Here is the technique for changing the url without reloading the page.
Updating address bar with new URL without hash or reloading the page
How do I modify the URL without reloading the page?
I am still trying to figure out though how to redirect the actual page without reloading the entire page. I am guessing they are loading it via ajax or something similar upon url change. I'll update this once I figure it out.
Edit: I am currently working on this feature for my site. The technique is to use ajax to load the content based on the url. I'll update this thread more as I update my site with this feature.
Edit 2: Damn, you will probably face the same problem I had trying to detect the url change without using onhashchange. If so, here you go:
How to detect URL change in JavaScript
This literally took me 4 hours just to figure that one out.....
Edit 3: I have now integrated this feature on my site. You can check it at
Grandweb
It is quite simple, but lots of work in appending the content once retrieved via ajax. So here is the process:
I am using pushState(); to change the url without reloading the page.
var url = $(this).attr('href');
var split_url = url.split('/');
var new_url = url.replace('https://grandweb.net/','');
window.history.pushState("object or string", "Title", "/write");
Using 'mouseup' was a bad idea, I changed my mind.
I then have to trigger the first function using 'mouseup' to retreieve the content via ajax, and then listen to succeeding onpopstate() for the next ones, because some mouse actions such as Mouse 4 or Mouse 5 are bound to the browser's Back and Forward button, and does not trigger via 'mouseup'.
$(window).on('mouseup', function(evt) {
get_content();
}
window.onpopstate = function(event) {
get_content();
}
The first one is responsible for triggering the function on first try because onpopstate only listens only when the browser's history API is populated.
Using mouseup was a bad idea, basically, don't use it unless you really want to detect mouse action from anywhere on the document.
I instead use the anchor tags/links to trigger the first function for retrieveng content.
example:
<a class="dynamic_btn" href="website.com/post">Home</a>
then
$(document).on('click','.dynamic_btn',function(e){
e.preventDefault();
get_content();
});
Using onhashchange is possible IF you have hashes on your url. I do not use hashes on my url so basically onhashchange is useless in my use case, unless I do not know something.
After retrieving the contents, I append them via creating DOM elements to existing containers from the page.
This is much easier to do if you are planning to change few elements or containers in your pages. If you plan on doing this to change a full page layout, goodluck. It's doable, but it's a really pain in tha *ss.
Upon observing Facebook, I learned that they do not implement this technique in all of their links/features. It makes sense because this is harder to maintain most especially because most of the work here is being done client side. It is very nice though because the page doesn't load.
I have implemented it on a few 'essential' functions of my website such as the viewing of posts and returning to the homepage. I can implement it on the whole site, but I am still deciding on that. That is all, thank you very much for reading internet stranger.
I'm using LocomotiveCMS on a project and I have some doubts on what's the best approach when dealing with ajax requests to the same site.
I have a Content Type for a model called reviews. There can be plenty of review entries, so I'd like to show 20 per time, then allow fetching other 20s by hitting a button (like a 'load more' button).
What is the best approach for this? I was thinking on making a custom API controller in order to do that. It would have to find the right type of content entries based on the content type for reviews. Then add some regular javascript that hits that controller and add the new set of reviews based on a mustache template. Does it make sense or is there something that LocomotiveCMS has in order to accomplish such type of tasks?
Update:
I got an answer from the LocomotiveCMS google group. Basically somebody suggested to create a liquid template that looks like a json. For the full answer go to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/locomotivecms/vJKDtl81v7E/IEwOR9hhLjMJ
I want to create Stack Overflow-like question asking functionality.
I have noticed as soon as the cursor is moved from Title textbox to Question, it is showing related links, without doing a page postback. I want to do something similar to that.
How can I perform this?
Use ajax.
When the title loses focus, use an ajax call to get related info and then show the results.
Also, use jquery!
A useful library when dealing with AJAX.
I'll explain:
I have a picture gallery, the first page is display.php.
Users can flip through pictures using arrows, when you click an arrow it sends an Ajax request to retrieve the next picture from the db. Now I want the URL to change according to the picture displayed.
So if the first picture is:
www.mydomain.com/display.php?picture=Paris at night
I'll flip to the next one and the URL would be
www.mydomain.com/display.php?picture=The Big Ben
How do I do this?
The trick here are uri's with an anchor fragment.
The part before '#' points to a resource on the internet, and after normally designates to a anchor on the page.
The browser does not refresh if the resource is the same but moves to the anchors position when present.
This way you can keep the convenience of browser history from a usability point of view while replacing certain parts on the page with ajax for a fast and responsive user interface.
Using a plugin like jQuery history (as suggested by others) is really easy: you decorate certain elements with a rel attribute by which the plugin takes care of the rest.
Also kinda related to this topic is something called 'hijax', and it's something I really like.
This means generating html just like you would in the old days before ajax. Then you hijack certain behavior like links and request the content with ajax, only replacing the necessary parts. This in combination with the above technique allows really SEO friendly and accessible webpages.
You can use the jQuery history plugin for example.
changing the search of the url will load the changed url.
See also: stackoverflow, javascript changing the get parameter without redirecting
Do you really want to use AJAX here?
A traditional web request would work like this...
User navigates to display.php
User clicks "next" and location is updated to "display.php?picture=Big-Ben"
Big Ben is shown to user, along with a link to "display.php?picture=Parliment"
User clicks "next" and location is updated to "display.php?picture=Parliment"
And so on.
With AJAX, you essentially replace the GET with a "behind the scenes" GET, that just replaces a portion of your page. You would do this to make things faster... for example...
User navigates to display.php
User clicks "next" and the next image location is obtained using an AJAX request
The image (and image description) is changed to the next image
What you are suggesting is that you retrieve the "next url" using AJAX and then also perform a GET on the whole page. You would be much better off sending the "next" image when you send each page and not using AJAX at all.
this best describes everything i think: http://ajaxpatterns.org/Unique_URLs
I am developing an issue tracking application in Django, mostly for a learning exercise but also for my own projects - and I am looking into using some AJAX for "enhanced" usability. For example, allowing users to "star" particular issues, which would add them to their watch list. This is implemented in a lot of sites, and is often AJAX - as the URL that the user is viewing doesn't need to change when they click the star.
Now, I am wondering what kind of response to return from my star_unstar view - that detects whether the request is being made via AJAX or not.
At present, if the request is an AJAX request, it returns just the section of HTML that is needed for the star, so I can replace the HTML in the star's parent DIV, so as the star appears "on" or "off", depending on the user's action.
However, I would much rather return some kind of JSON object, as it just seems more "proper", I think. The problem with this method is that the javascript would have to modify the star image's src attribute, the href on it, and the link title also, which seems a lot of work for such a simple feature. I am also looking into in-line commenting in the future, but I want to get a feel for how things "should" be done before I start coding lots of JS.
What is the general consensus when implementing features such as this, not just with Django, but all frameworks that operate in a similar way?
When I work with Ajax my main concern is usually to limit the amount of data I have to send. Ajax applications of this type should be very responsive (invisible if possible).
In the case of toggling a star, I would create the actual on/off states as CSS classes, StarOn and StarOff. The client will download both the off and on star when they first visit the page, which is acceptable considering that the star is a small image. When you want to change the star appearance in the future, you'll only be editing CSS, and won't have to touch the javascript at all.
As for the Ajax, I'd send back and forth one thing -- a JSON variable true/false that says whether or not the request was successful. As soon as the user clicks on the star, I'd change it to the StarOn state and send out the request. 99% of the time Ajax will return true and the user will not even realize that there was some sort of delay in the web request. In the rare case where you get a false back, you'll have to revert the star to StarOff and display an error message to the user.
I don't think your question relates particularly to Django or Python, as you point out at the end.
There's a lot of personal preference in whether you return a blob of HTML to write into the DOM or some serialized data as JSON. There are some practical factors you might want to take into account though.
Advantages of HTML:
- Easy and fast to write straight into the page.
Advantages of JSON:
- Not coupled to the front-end of your application. If you need that functionality anywhere else in the application, it is there ready to go.
My call on it. It's only a relatively trivial amount of HTML to update, and I'd probably go for returning JSON in this case and giving myself the extra flexibility that might be useful down the road.