MVC 3. Load menu and content separately - ajax

I have an app with 3 sections:
Main menu;
Context Menu - Related to selected item in main menu;
and Page body - Related to selected item in context menu;
"Main menu" and "Context menu" are based on membership. I don't want to load them everytime my page loads, because that would consume resources database. So, I'm using ajax to load main menu only one time, and when an item is selected, I load the context menu for that item.
My problem is: Every form's post will erase my menu.
Question: Will I have to build my entire application using ajax? I don't wanna do that, because it is too much simpler do a post in the form then send all data to controller with ajax.
Until now, I have 2 options:
Load my menus with ajax and the page body with IFRAME, so the post's will not render again my menus.
Do everything using ajax;
Is there any alternative to load my menus with ajax and be able to use form's post?
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

The sentence that gave me a pause is this "I don't want to load them everytime my page loads, because that would consume resources database."
You see, I've build quite a lot of apps, that display menus and sub-menus based on user roles (what you called membership). This has never been an issue from the resources or database perspective.
You can access all the membership information that you need once, when your used is being logged in. In the simplest case user's identity will be stored in the context along with the roles they have (HttpContext.User), so you do not to need a database lookup at all to get this information on every request. Note that with this scenario no ajax is required either.
If for whatever reason you can't store your membership information in the context like this, you still can store in in session (if in-memory) or in encrypted Cookies.
Now, I understand, that I don't all the details of your scenario, and that may be in your scenario what you are trying to do is warranted, however I suggest you think it through again, as under normal circumstances what you indicate is a problem (database resource) should not be a problem at all.
The bottom line is: if you alter your application that it stores the membership information when user logs on you won't have your problem to start with.

You don’t have to build all of your application using Ajax. But in this scenario Ajax may be the best way forward.
Following is my suggestion
Create your data entry for inside a dev
Have each input controller marked with a class (say ‘dataEntry’)
Create a javascript function to iterate the dev and build a list of all elements that has class dataEntry
Build a json object using the list. Use the name of each element as property name and value as the property value
Use jquery ajax to post this to the controller action
[optional] you can use .done and .fail methods to take action on success or failures of the call
I know this may look intimidating, but if you have many data entry forms, you can re-use this code.

Related

I need to introduce an intermediate page before I load the actual page for every request

I've a web application that uses FreeMarker templates and tiles to do the View job in the MVC world. So upon my request to the application, say /load.do I would like to introduce an intermediate page that will have a loader icon just to indicate the page is being loaded on the subsequent request, which is not known to the user.
So ultimately what I'm achieving is a better user experience and also if used within framework (the iFrames) this comes handy to show the loader icon when there is a new request that is happening.
Can someone point me to the right method I can use here ?
This is possible using spring mvc.
You need to create something like a WaitController. On user submit , this controller will be called. This can trigger your original request in background and take a reference(UUID) for the call and will render a wait page having the reference id of the original request set in model. Wait page can either trigger immediately the main controller using reference id or can poll the reference id on regular intervals or use web socket to know the availability of results. Once results are ready, it should redirect user to the actual result page.

ClickFunnels integration with rails2 app

Is there a way to create a page in ClickFunnels(https://www.clickfunnels.com/) website and when I submit that page, I need to store the form details in my rails app(into a particular table). Which means I want to display my database in the clickfunnels integrations list. I googled hours but couldn't get much information on this.
can anyone suggest me if you have done this. A reference link also much appreciated.
We couldn't find any way to do this inside clickfunnels itself, if there is a easy way to add custom systems to their integrations I too look forward to seeing those answers. Until then, here's what we did: We just put our custom form on their page and used ajax to send it back out the end point in our system it needed to hand that data too.
Then, since we also needed to submit the same info to click funnels, we build a fake CF form(I think we actually put one on the page, but used CSS to hide it, then filled it out dynamically from our custom form), and call submit on that form, sending the user through the normal click funnels submission process and sending them to the next page in the funnel.

Avoid re-display of menu using MVC

My team is creating an MVC4 application which has an upper menu structure that contains menu items specific for the currently logged-in user, and displays the content for the selected menu item below. The menus are displayed in a partial view "_MainMenu" and the MainMenuController Index action is responsible for getting the menu data from the database and returning the menu partial view. The main layout "_Layout" renders the menu by calling #Html.Action("Index", "MainMenu").
We want to avoid hitting the database to get the menu structure data every time the page is refreshed, and we also ideally want to avoid any visible reload of the menu structure when a different menu item is selected.
I've been looking into AJAX, and I've implemented something where selecting a new menu item will load the content for that item below the menu by replacing a div with ID="mainContent" with the content as a partial view (this div lives on the loaded view "MainContent"). In this way, the menu is never re-loaded and the page never refreshes completely (only the different partial content views are swapped in and out as different menu items are selected).
This solution works, but I'm not sure if it's really best practice, or if there's a better solution involving caching. One of the problems with the AJAX solution is the URL never changes from "http://MySite/MainContent". This means that clicking the Back button on the browser doesn't work as expected, and also hitting F5 to refresh the browser page loses the currently displayed page. The refresh issue can probably be resolved by remembering the selected menu item, but I'm still not convinced this isthe way AJAX was intended to be used.
Can someone please tell me if they think caching would be a better solution for this scenario based on their experience.
If the user's menu items are not likely to change, then you could use a simple static Dictionary (the long is the user id) to cache the data in the backend, and refresh it periodically.
Generally, if you do any caching you have to make sure the cached data gets refreshed when underlying data is updated. Therefore it's only simple and safe if you have only one app accessing your DB. If there are multiple apps, then you'll have to add a mechanism to keep the cache in sync.
In project I'm working on we've stored User-Role-Module entities and relationships in DB, and bound module permissions to roles rather than users. Since role permissions aren't likely to change, they're safe to cache.

asp.net mvc3 persisting form data when user navigates to unrelated page

So a user fills out a form then decides to click on a unrelated link that happens to be on the page say to a disclaimer page. Then using internal site navigation (not the browser back button) comes back to the form he was on. The link back is an ActionLink.
What is the best way to keep his data on the form. I figure I'll have to serialize the data and save it. I can do a ajax call before going to the other page. I'm looking for the sexy solution. Something that will handle it on a global scale.
Is this even a standard practice?
HTTP is Stateless. You are trying to bring some Stateful nature it !
If you really want to keep the data, You can keep in the Session variable and access it there. You need to override the click event and (in javascript) send the form data to an action via jQuery ajax post where you store it into Session. You can access it later when you come back to this page.
Do you really want to do that ? I think 80 % people knows that once they click on another link, the data will go away. You could probably show some alert message to ask "Are you sure to leave this page" like stackoverflow does.

JSP includes and MVC pattern

I am new to JSP/Servlets/MVC and am writing a JSP page (using Servlets and MVC pattern) that displays information about recipies, and want the ability for users to "comment" on it too.
So for the Servlet, on doGet(), it grabs all the required info into a Model POJO and forwards the request on to a JSP View for rendering. That is working just fine.
I'd like the "comment" part to be a separate JSP, so on the RecipeView.jsp I can use to separate these views out. So I've made that, but am now a little stuck. The form in the CommentOnRecipe.jsp posts to a CommentAction servlet that handles the recording of the comment just fine. So when I reload the Recipe page, I can see the comment I just made.
I'd like to:
Reload the page automatically after commenting (no AJAX for now)
Block the user from making more than one comment on each Recipe over a 1 day timeframe (via a Cookie). So I store a cookie indicating the product ID whenever the user makes a comment, so we can check this later? How would it work in a MVC context?
Show a message to the user that they have already commented on the Recipe when they visit one
which they have commented on
I'm confused about using beans/including JSPs etc on how to achieve this.
I know in ASP.NET land, it would be a UseControl that I would place on a page, or in ASP.NET MVC, it would be a PartialView of some sort. I'm just confused with the way this works in a JSP/Servlets/MVC context.
you can use response.sendRedirect() or forward APIs in javax.servlet to redirect to a new page or refresh the same page (redirect to the same page/path so that the beans/data gets refreshed)
about restricting to one comment per day - yes you can use cookie but the problem is that user might use another browser type (chrome, FF, Safari) and will be able to make multiple comments.
Ideally you should store the lastCommentTime in the model/persistent store and tie it to the user information - this way your model object can expose an API that checks the last comment time and returns true/false depending on whether user can comment or not.
You can use this API in your servlet/JSP to show/hide the comment button, for example and also show a message

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