How To Elegantly Handle JSON Objects in Responses From Ajax Requests? - ajax

I'm really new to using JSON to handle my Ajax Request and Response cycle. I've previously used just plain old parameters passed as POST data and I've rendered straight HTML in the response which was then placed into the DOM. As I've looked at various examples and read through various tutorials, it seems like a fairly common practice to simply build a string from the JSON object mixed with HTML that's been hard coded into the string and then assign the string as innerHTML to some element.
A common example looks something like this:
var jo = eval(req.responseText);
var strTxt = '<span>' + jo.f_name + ' ' + jo.l_name + '</span><br/>' + 'Your Age Is: ' + jo.age + '<br/>';
$('myDiv').innerHTML = strTxt;
Is there a more elegant (or correct) way of handling the JSON response so that I'm not hard coding HTML in the javascript? Or is this pretty much how people do it?
P.S. Links to tutorials or other sources are appreciated.

I steer away from writing a lot of HTML within JavaScript strings. I prefer separation of structure from data manipulation. The better alternative is to place that code in the page, load the values based off the ID's, and show/hide it if necessary:
<div id="codeBlock" style="visible=false;">
<span id="val1"></span>
<br/>
<span id="val2"></span>
<br/>
</div>
............
<script>
var jo = eval(req.responseText);
$('val1').innerHTML = jo.f_name + ' ' + jo.l_name;
$('val2').innerHTML = 'Your Age Is: ' + jo.age;
$('codeBlock').show();
</script>
That might not be exactly what you want to do but you get the idea.

You could create the elements in the DOM using javascript instead of just dropping them into the innerHtml of the DIV, something like the following (untested):
var mySpan = document.createElement("span");
var spanContent = document.createTextNode(jo.f_name + ' ' + jo.l_name);
mySpan.appendChild(spanContent);
var myBr = document.createElement("br");
mySpan.appendChild(myBr);
var otherSpanContent = document.createTextNode('Your Age Is: ' + jo.age);
mySpan.appendChild(otherSpanContent);
mySpan.appendChild(myBr);
$('myDiv').appendChild(mySpan);

You could check out a templating engine such as PURE - may be a bit hard to get into at first but it supports many major javascript frameworks (and DOMAssistant which is nice) and separates html from the data.

The objects created from JSON are standard Javascript objects, therefore you can easily use jQuery selectors to create or access DOM elements and insert content from your JSON objects.
eg.
// Create a new span element and set its text
var personSpan=$("<span>").text(jo.f_name + ' ' + jo.l_name);
// Append the span to the existing myDiv element
$("myDiv").append(personSpan);
// Create a new div element (better then br) and set its text
var personDiv=$("<div>").text("Your Age Is: " + jo.age);
// Append the new div to the existing myDiv element
$("myDiv").append(personDiv);

Related

socket.io send an object to a html table

I am a real newbie - I was given a leg up to create something and it is using socket.io. I'm trying to fiddle around the edges, learning odd things as I go now. But have hit a wall in a really early stage of my project. It May well be too deep ... but just in the case asking here gives me an answer I can make sense of - here goes:
I have essentially three files working together. server.js, client.js, and index.ejs (which is my html file). I have a series of stuff happening in a "room" and now I want to display the values (next I will want to do more with them, but for now display) of an object in a html table.
server.js
... it creates the information of interest (uses a database call that currently works) and then:
io.to(roomId).emit('room-location-update', result.rows);
client.js
... receives data. My console.log has it all there. Then I assign a variable to hold it for use in the html:
socket.on("room-location-update", (data_information) => {
console.log(data_information);
//I think I need code in here?
var wp = data_information;
}
index.ejs
... fails to show anything. I have a table constructed to use the variable from client.js in a series of table cells essentially all constructed as:
<td id=wp.name><td id=wp.radius>
but nothing is displayed. the .name and .radius attributes are valid in the database when data_information is first created.
why nothing displayed? Google searches imply (to me) that this is basic stuff and should work. So clearly I am missing something basic (?) Any ideas what?
sorry, I don't actually know what you are talking about with edits. Apologies if I have done something wrong - I am a genuine newbie.
In the end I gave up on doing it in the ejs file and created a big string containing the html table codes and substituting in values where I wanted them in the client.js. And just popped that into the ejs file. No idea if this is efficient or not but it works, so hooray.
truncated code snippet of what worked for me (in client.js):
var $table = "<table border='1'>"
$table += "<thead><tr><th>Player</th><th>Location</th></tr></thead><tbody>"
for (var i = 0; i < display_information.length; i++) {
$table += '<tr><td>' + display_information[i].id + '</td>'
$table += '<td>' + display_information[i].name + '</td>'
}
$table += "</tr></tbody></table>"
$('#displayinfo').empty().append($table);
and then in my index.ejs is: <pre><span id="displayinfo"></span></pre>

How to verify a dynamic value with a space using jasmine expect(check).toContain(value)?

I want to validate a value , which is dynamic and retrieved from one page to another. That element also has space on it.
Below is my coding for that.
Page - 1
var PerAge = element(by.css("h1 > span.ng-binding")).getText();
This element has space on it , like this - > name
Page-2 - > same value displayed in an other page. This element has no space on it.
var HumAge = element(by.repeater("slide in ctrl.slides track by $index")).getText();
Now, I want to validate the value on Page 2 is same or not. Since , the repeater has bunch of other values , so I am using .toContain to validate the value.
The issue here is , the PerAge has space on it.
I checked this stack overflow question , but it did not work.
Expected '> ' to equal '> ' in jasmine.
expect(PerAge).toContain(HumAge);
Its returning following error
Expected 'Shane' to contain ' Shane'.
I tried trim, It doesn't recognize trim.
I cannot use .ToEqual like below since the element have bunch of other things.
expect(PerAge).toEqual('\xA0HumAge')
If I understand you correctly, you retrieve a value on page 1 like this:
var PerAge = element(by.css("h1 > span.ng-binding")).getText();
and use it on page 2 to compare it:
var HumAge = element(by.repeater("slide in ctrl.slides track by $index")).getText()
expect(HumAge).toEqual(PerAge);
This fails due to the spaces.
The reason why you can't use .trim() is because .getText() returns a promise. You first need to resolve the promise before you can use .trim().
What you can do is for example this. You also find an example of the code if you use a transpiler like Babel or use TypeScript which both support Async/Await.
var PerAge, HumAge;
element(by.css("h1 > span.ng-binding")).getText()
.then(function(text) {
PerAge = text.trim();
});
// Go to page 2
element(by.repeater("slide in ctrl.slides track by $index")).getText()
.then(function(text) {
HumAge = text.trim();
});
expect(HumAge).toEqual(PerAge);
// If you can use async await because you transpile with Babel or use typescript you can do this to tidy the code
// $ is the Protractor shorthand for the `css`-locator
const PerAge = (await $('h1 > span.ng-binding').getText()).trim();
const HumAge = (await $('[ng-repeater="slide in ctrl.slides track by $index"]').getText()).trim();
expect(HumAge).toEqual(PerAge);

Google AJAX Transliteration API: Is it possible to make all input fields in the page transliteratable?

I've used "Google AJAX Transliteration API" and it's going well with me.
http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/referenceTransliteration.html
Currently I've a project that I need all input fields in every page (input & textarea tags) to be transliteratable, while these input fields differs from page to page (dynamic).
As I know, I've to call makeTransliteratable(elementIds, opt_options) method in the API call to define which input fields to make transliteratable, and in my case here I can't predefine those fields manually. Is there a way to achieve this?
Thanks in advance
Rephrasing what you are asking for: you would like to collect together all the inputs on the page which match a certain criteria, and then pass them into an api.
A quick look at the API reference says that makeTransliteratable will accept an array of id strings or an array of elements. Since we don't know the ids of the elements before hand, we shall pass an array of elements.
So, how to get the array of elements?
I'll show you two ways: a hard way and an easy way.
First, to get all of the text areas, we can do that using the document.getElementsByTagName API:
var textareas = document.getElementsByTagName("textarea");
Getting the list of inputs is slightly harder, since we don't want to include checkboxes, radio buttons etc. We can distinguish them by their type attribute, so lets write a quick function to make that distinction:
function selectElementsWithTypeAttribute(elements, type)
{
var results = [];
for (var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++)
{
if (elements[i].getAttribute("type") == type)
{
results.push(elements[i]);
}
}
return results;
}
Now we can use this function to get the inputs, like this:
var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName("input")
var textInputs = selectElementsWithTypeAttribute(textInputs, "text");
Now that we have references to all of the text boxes, we can concatenate them into one array, and pass that to the api:
var allTextBoxes = [].concat(textareas).concat(textInputs);
makeTransliteratable(allTextBoxes, /* options here */);
So, this should all work, but we can make it easier with judicious use of library methods. If you were to download jQuery (google it), then you could write this more compact code instead:
var allTextBoxes = $("input[type='text'], textarea").toArray();
makeTransliteratable(allTextBoxes, /* options here */);
This uses a CSS selector to find all of the inputs with a type attribute of "text", and all textareas. There is a handy toArray method which puts all of the inputs into an array, ready to pass to makeTransliteratable.
I hope this helped,
Douglas

Extract part of HTML document in jQuery

I want to make an AJAX call to an HTML-returning page, extract part of the HTML (using jQuery selectors), and then use that part in my jQuery-based JavaScript.
The AJAX retrieval is pretty simple. This gives me the entire HTML document in the "data" parameter of the callback function.
What I don't understand is how to handle that data in a useful way. I'd like to wrap it in a new jQuery object and then use a selector (via find() I believe) to get just the part I want. Once I have that I'll be passing it off to another JavaScript object for insertion into my document. (This delegation is why I'm not using jQuery.load() in the first place).
The get() examples I see all seem to be variations on this:
$('.result').html(data);
...which, if I understand it correctly, inserts the entire returned document into the selected element. Not only is that suspicious (doesn't this insert the <head> etc?) but it's too coarse for what I want.
Suggestions on alternate ways to do this are most welcome.
You can use your standard selector syntax, and pass in the data as the context for the selector. The second parameter, data in this case, is our context.
$.post("getstuff.php", function(data){
var mainDiv = $("#mainDiv", data); // finds <div id='mainDiv'>...</div>
}, "html");
This is equivalent to doing:
$(data).find("#mainDiv");
Depending on how you're planning on using this, $.load() may be a better route to take, as it allows both a URL and a selector to filter the resulting data, which is passed directly into the element the method was called on:
$("#mylocaldiv").load("getstuff.php #mainDiv");
This would load the contents of <div id='mainDiv'>...</div> in getstuff.php into our local page element <div id='mylocaldiv'>...</div>.
You could create a div and then put the HTML in that, like this…
var div = $("<div>").html(data);
...and then filter the data like this…
var content = $("#content", div.get(0));
…and then use that.
This may look dangerous as you're creating an element and putting arbitrary HTML into it, but it's not: anything dangerous (like a script tag) will only be executed when it's inserted into the document. Here, we insert the data into an element, but that element is never put into the document; only if we insert content into the document would anything be inserted, and even then, only anything in content would be inserted.
You can use load on a new element, and pass that to a function:
function handle(element){
$(element).appendTo('body');
}
$(function(){
var div = $('<div/>');
div.load('/help a', function(){handle(div);});
});
Example: http://jsbin.com/ubeyu/2
You may want to look at the dataFilter() parameter of the $.ajax method. It lets you do operations on the results before they are passed out.
jQuery.ajax
You can do the thing this way
$.get(
url,
{
data : data
},
function (response) {
var page_content = $('.page-content',response).get(0);
console.log(page_content);
}
)
Here in the console.log you will see the inner HTML of the expected/desired portion from the response. Then you can use it as your wish

Image tag not closing with HTMLAgilityPack

Using the HTMLAgilityPack to write out a new image node, it seems to remove the closing tag of an image, e.g. should be but when you check outer html, has .
string strIMG = "<img src='" + imgPath + "' height='" + pubImg.Height + "px' width='" + pubImg.Width + "px' />";
HtmlNode newNode = HtmlNode.Create(strIMG);
This breaks xhtml.
Telling it to output XML as Micky suggests works, but if you have other reasons not to want XML, try this:
doc.OptionWriteEmptyNodes = true;
Edit 1:Here is how to fix an HTML Agilty Pack document to correctly display image (img) tags:
if (HtmlNode.ElementsFlags.ContainsKey("img"))
{ HtmlNode.ElementsFlags["img"] = HtmlElementFlag.Closed;}
else
{ HtmlNode.ElementsFlags.Add("img", HtmlElementFlag.Closed);}
replace "img" for any other tag to fix them as well (input, select, and option come up frequently). Repeat as needed. Keep in mind that this will produce rather than , because of the HAP bug preventing the "closed" and "empty" flags from being set simultaneously.
Source: Mike Bridge
Original answer:
Having just labored over solutions to this issue, and not finding any sufficient answers (doctype set properly, using Output as XML, Check Syntax, AutoCloseOnEnd, and Write Empty Node options), I was able to solve this with a dirty hack.
This will certainly not solve the issue outright for everyone, but for anyone returning their generated html/xml as a string (EG via a web service), the simple solution is to use fake tags that the agility pack doesn't know to break.
Once you have finished doing everything you need to do on your document, call the following method once for each tag giving you a headache (notable examples being option, input, and img). Immediately after, render your final string and do a simple replace for each tag prefixed with some string (in this case "Fix_", and return your string.
This is only marginally better in my opinion than the regex solution proposed in another question I cannot locate at the moment (something along the lines of )
private void fixHAPUnclosedTags(ref HtmlDocument doc, string tagName, bool hasInnerText = false)
{
HtmlNode tagReplacement = null;
foreach(var tag in doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//"+tagName))
{
tagReplacement = HtmlTextNode.CreateNode("<fix_"+tagName+"></fix_"+tagName+">");
foreach(var attr in tag.Attributes)
{
tagReplacement.SetAttributeValue(attr.Name, attr.Value);
}
if(hasInnerText)//for option tags and other non-empty nodes, the next (text) node will be its inner HTML
{
tagReplacement.InnerHtml = tag.InnerHtml + tag.NextSibling.InnerHtml;
tag.NextSibling.Remove();
}
tag.ParentNode.ReplaceChild(tagReplacement, tag);
}
}
As a note, if I were a betting man I would guess that MikeBridge's answer above inadvertently identifies the source of this bug in the pack - something is causing the closed and empty flags to be mutually exclusive
Additionally, after a bit more digging, I don't appear to be the only one who has taken this approach:
HtmlAgilityPack Drops Option End Tags
Furthermore, in cases where you ONLY need non-empty elements, there is a very simple fix listed in that same question, as well as the HAP codeplex discussion here: This essentially sets the empty flag option listed in Mike Bridge's answer above permanently everywhere.
There is an option to turn on XML output that makes this issue go away.
var htmlDoc = new HtmlDocument();
htmlDoc.OptionOutputAsXml = true;
htmlDoc.LoadHtml(rawHtml);
This seems to be a bug with HtmlAgilityPack. There are many ways to reproduce this, for example:
Debug.WriteLine(HtmlNode.CreateNode("<img id=\"bla\"></img>").OuterHtml);
Outputs malformed HTML. Using the suggested fixes in the other answers does nothing.
HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
doc.OptionOutputAsXml = true;
HtmlNode node = doc.CreateElement("x");
node.InnerHtml = "<img id=\"bla\"></img>";
doc.DocumentNode.AppendChild(node);
Debug.WriteLine(doc.DocumentNode.OuterHtml);
Produces malformed XML / XHTML like <x><img id="bla"></x>
I have created a issue in CodePlex for this.

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