I’m looking for a neat way to execute a check to see if there are any messages in an inbox (realtime) in a Grails 2.x application.
I’ve moved away from polling via ajax to websockets, which is great at the point where someone actually sends you the message, but when you change to another screen, the “count” still needs to be initialized.
Can anyone advise on a elegant way of doing this?
Interceptors are not ideal as I need to check across just about all controllers
Filters are not ideal because on some screens with graphs there are many ajax request, the check would be run many times for each request.
I’m wondering if there are any other solutions that I’m not thinking of.. but possibly not.
A filter that disregards the check if a request header indicates an Ajax request would work.
Depending on where you need this "count" you could: In your layout (main.gsp for instance) call a tag library which makes use of a service to fetch the count. That way it's only applied to GSPs where the layout is applied (e.g. not any ajax request).
Related
Currently, Fine Uploader uses a POST to send the data to the server - is there a way to change this to a PUT in the options object? I'm using backbone.js, and a POST makes a new record, and a PUT triggers an update.
Thanks.
POST is the most appropriate method for an upload request, mostly because file upload requests are intended to be idempotent. PUT request are more appropriate for non-idempotent (update) requests.
However, there is another reason why PUT is not a good choice here: this will not work in IE9 and older. In those browsers, a form is submitted inside of a hidden iframe for each file to be uploaded, due to lack of File API support. There are only two valid values for the method attribute on a <form>: GET and POST. So you'd have to handle POST requests anyway, unless you are not going to support IE9 and older (not likely).
I am familiar with backbone.js, and there is no reason why POST requests cannot be used, especially in this instance. You haven't provided any specific reason why PUT requests are preferable here, so I can only assume that if there is such a requirement, this is likely due to some logic in your application that should probably be re-evaluated.
From my understanding, AJAX requires the use of the XMLHttpRequest object. What I am confused on is the source of where the XMLHttpRequest object is connected to? In the school projects, I have connected it to XML and mySQL and was told that I am doing AJAX. What if I connect the XMLHttpRequest object to a PHP script which contains an array of data? Would that count as AJAX?
The reason why I ask is because I was thinking of adding AJAX to my resume, but since this area seems so broad and I have had limited experience with it, I want to make sure I have a clear understanding of this technology.
The AJAX part is just how the request is made from the client. If it happens asynchronously using XmlHttpRequest, it doesn't matter where the request is going :-) It could be a request to an server side script in PHP, a JSON file, an xml file, or anything else.
It's not broad at all. Any time you do an async web request (actually, it doesn't even have to be async, but that's really the best way to to use it) via javascript (rather than through a Form submit) you're using AJAX. What you connect to or what you retrieve is irrelevant.
Without being rude, I'd like to point out that if you state on a resume that you possess "a clear understanding of this technology" then you're not being honest, since you're asking this question, which indicates that your understanding of the technology isn't "clear".
If, however, you're totally confortable with the use of Ajax and were simply not entirely clear on it's lexical definition... well... now you should be.
yes ,the ajax can used for all language,soever java or asp and php
I have a partial template that I want to intermittently poll the server (one of my controllers) and update its display with the result.
What is the appropriate way to do this with grails?
I have seen some articles saying there are specific grails tags for ajax calls, which would be nicer as it would allow clean direction to a controller/method, however, I've not seen anything in Grails to suggest that polling of a controller method could be done altogether.
Thanks!
There's nothing built into Grails that will do the polling for you. The most basic way is to simply use the setInterval() function in your JavaScript. If you're using a JavaScript library then something might be available there that would make things easier on you.
As a side note, be careful when implementing polling. If you're application isn't scaled correctly and you expect a lot of users, polling can bring your system down quickly.
I'm still pretty new to AJAX and javascript, but I'm getting there slowly.
I have a web-based application that relies heavily on mySQL and there are individual user accounts that are accessed and the UI is populated with user specific data.
I'm working on getting rid of a tabbed navigation bar that currently loads new pages because all that changes from page to page is information within one box.
The thing is that box needs to reload info from the database, etc.
I have had great help from users here showing that I need to call the database within the php page that ajax is calling.
OK-so pardon the lengthy intro-what I'm wondering is are there any specific limitations to what ajax can call that I need to know about? IE: someone mentioned that it's best not to call script files and that I should remove scripts from the php page that is being called and keep those in the 'parent' page. Any other things like this I need to keep in mind?
To clarify: I'm not looking to discuss the merits/drawbacks of the technology. I'm wondering about specific coding implementation that I need to be aware of (for example-I didn't until yesterday realize that if even if I had established a mySQL connection on the page, that I would need to re establish that connection in my called page as well...makes perfect sense now).
XMLHttpRequest which powers ajax has a number of limitations. I recommend brushing up on the same origin policy. This is a pivotal rule because it limits where AJAX calls can be made.
First, you can't have Javascript embedded in the HTTP response to an AJAX call. That's a security issue.
No mention of the dynamics of the database, but if the data to be displayed in tabs doesn't have to be real-time, why not cache it server-side?
I find that like any other protocol, Ajax works best in tightly controlled conditions. It wouldn't make much sense for updating nearly the whole page, unless you find that the user experience is improved with an on-page 'loader'. Without going into workarounds, disadvantages will include losing the browser back button / history, issues such as the one your friend mentioned, and also embedded resources and other rich content can suffer as well, and just having an extra layer of complexity to deal with in your app. Don't treat it as magic sauce for your app - make sure every use delivers specific results that benefit your client / audience.
IMHO, it's best to put your client side javascript in a separate page and then import it - neater container. one thing I've faced before is how to call xml back which contains code to run such as more javascript - it's worth checking if this is likely earlier on and avoiding, than having to look at evals.
Mildly interesting.
I am trying to find the optimal architecture for an ajax-heavy Django application I'm currently building. I'd like to keep a consistent way of doing forms, validation, fetching data, JSON message format but find it exceedingly hard to find a solution that can be used consistently.
Can someone point me in the right direction or share their view on best practice?
I make everything as normal views which display normally in the browser. That includes all the replies to AJAX requests (sub pages).
When I want to make bits of the site more dynamic I then use jQuery to do the AJAX, or in this case AJAH and just load the contents of one of the divs in the sub page into the requesting page.
This technique works really well - it is very easy to debug the sub pages as they are just normal pages, and jQuery makes your life very easy using these as part of an AJA[XH]ed page.
For all the answers to this, I can't believe no one's mentioned django-piston yet. It's mainly promoted for use in building REST APIs, but it can output JSON (which jQuery, among others, can consume) and works just like views in that you can do anything with a request, making it a great option for implementing AJAX interactions (or AJAJ [JSON], AJAH, etc whatever). It also supports form validation.
I can't think of any standard way to insert ajax into a Django application, but you can have a look to this tutorial.
You will also find more details on django's page about Ajax
Two weeks ago I made a write up how I implement sub-templates to use them in "normal" and "ajax" request (for Django it is the same). Maybe it is helpful for you.
+1 to Nick for pages displaying normally in the browser. That seems to be the best starting point.
The problem with the simplest AJAX approaches, such as Nick and vikingosegundo propose, is that you'll have to rely on the innerHTML property in your Javascript. This is the only way to dump the new HTML sent in the JSON. Some would consider this a Bad Thing.
Unfortunately I'm not aware of a standard way to replicate the display of forms using Javascript that matches the Django rendering. My approach (that I'm still working on) is to subclass the Django Form class so it outputs bits of Javascript along with the HTML from as_p() etc. These then replicate the form my manipulating the DOM.
From experience I know that managing an application where you generate the HTML on the server side and just "insert" it into your pages, becomes a nightmare. It is also impossible to test using the Django test framework. If you're using Selenium or a similar tool, it's ok, but you need to wait for the ajax request to go return so you need tons of sleeps in your test script, which may slow down your test suite.
If the purpose of using the Ajax technique is to create a good user interface, I would recommend going all in, like the GMail interface, and doing everything in the browser with JavaScript. I have written several apps like this using nothing but jQuery, state machines for managing UI state and JSON with ReST on the backend. Django, IMHO, is a perfect match for the backend in this case. There are even third party software for generating a ReST-interface to your models, which I've never used myself, but as far as I know they are great at the simple things, but you of course still need to do your own business logic.
With this approach, you do run into the problem of duplicating code in the JS and in your backend, such as form handling, validation, etc. I have been thinking about solving this with generating structured information about the forms and validation logic which I can use in JS. This could be compiled at deploy-time and be loaded as any other JS file.
Also, avoid XML. The browsers are slow at parsing it, it is a pain to generate and a pain to work with in the browser. Use JSON.
Im currently testing:
jQuery & backbone.js client-side
django-piston (intermediate layer)
Will write later my findings on my blog http://blog.sserrano.com