Do AJAX calls make DOM heavier in size? - html

I have a 3 column structure for my site.
Links are shown at Left hand side layout.
User clicks a link, and I trigger an AJAX call to load middle column of layout. I load a complete template file in the middle column.
My question -
When user clicks another link, I make another AJAX call to load middle column.
After each sub sequent ajax call, does my DOM gets heavier in size, as I am loading different htmls in middle column, without refreshing whole page ?

No. If you are replacing the data with new data then the old data is discarded.

Well, yes your DOM as you say is technically bigger and you are dynamically injecting HTML. However, this should not be an issue, and certainly not on the client. Size is only of concern if you are downloading the whole page.

Related

restore ajax dynamically added content on back button

I have a very simple scenario. A web page with a list of items which invokes ajax call upon clicking on any item and dynamically add some text to the page.
Now, obviously, if I leave this page and then I press the back button I get the initial list without all the dynamically added text.
I've been reading a lot about this issue. There are a many tricks to preserve the information and/or load it again from server. But it seems to me that this really simple and desired behaviour should have a simple solution without the need for any trick or server re-loading which will result in obvious noticeable delay for the user.
So, does anyone know about a simple way to get back to the page via back button and retain all the dynamically added parts without the need to load them again from the server?

Download certain part of HTML code

I am trying to make a push notification about Internet page update, but downloading the full page (700k) again every minute is quite troublesome for users. Is there is a way to download only a specific part of page?
As far as I have read there isn't any way to get delta information about the page. Is there a method which allows that? I haven't found one for a day (if there is, how can I locate the certain byte where my information is placed in the first place?
What you want to do is learn some basics in AJAX calls.
You set an auto timer to reload div contents on whatever needs to be updated.
You could use a Range header like this:
Range: bytes=0-1000
This will obviously get you the first 1000 bytes.

Using a single shared element across multiple partial views

I have a basic ASP.Net MVC 3 application which has a number of controllers and a number of actions (and subsequently views)
A common feature of the application is to show a pop-up dialog window for basic user input. One of the key features of this dialog process is a faded mask that gets shown behind the dialog box.
Each of these dialog window controls is in a separate Partial View page.
Now, some view pages may use multiple dialog boxes, and therefore include multiple partial views in them - which as is would mean multiple instances of the "mask" element.
What I am trying to find a solution for is to only need to create one instance of a "mask" element regardless of the number of dialog partial views I include, and then the script in each partial dialog will have access to this element (so basically it just needs to be on the page somewhere)
The only real idea I have come up with so far is to add the "mask" element to the master page (or in the original view page) and this will mean it only gets added once. The problem here is that it will be added even when it is not needed (albeit one small single element)
I can live with this, but I would like to know if there is a better way to handle these kinds of scenarios?
A quick idea that came to mind is some kind of master page inheritance hierarchy, So I may have a DialogMasterPage that inherits from the standard current master page. How does that sound for an approach?
Thanks
To do something like this, where each module can register their need for a certain thing in the master page, you can use HttpContext to store a flag of whether you need to write the mask div, and just set that property in each partial. At the end of the master page, if the flag is set, you can then write the mask div if its set to true.
Obviously to make this cleaner you could wrap it all in an HtmlHelper extension or something.
My initial thought is for you to use something like jQuery UI where it handles the masking for you or if you are using something custom you can load the content for the dialog via ajax then show it in the single dialog on the master page.

How to Load the page First and read database

HTML form has some text boxes and a drop down box.
Drop down has huge values, and takes lot of time to fetch from database.
So I want to load the page first and while the user fills the form (text boxes) I want to load the drop down box (without his knowledge :-) ).
But without any event trigger, how do I make call to database again ?
I am using JSF with RichFaces, Servlet.
The following code is not working
<h:selectOneMenu value="#{obj.selectedValue}">
<f:selectItems value="#{obj.allValues}" />
<a4j:support selfRendered="true" action="#{bean.action}"/>
</h:selectOneMenu>
Thanks,
+1 for using Ajax - but if you have a very large number of values,t hen you might want to consider using an auto completion dropdown - where the the user starts typing what they need and after they have typed a few characters, you kick off your ajax reqeuest and just load those requests that match.
have a look at "google suggest" if you want to see this in action
-Ace
As already mentioned you can use AJAX to load the dropdown items asynchronously, but I would suggest redesigning the form so that the huge dropdown is not required. Perhaps let the user search for the correct value on a previous or subsequent screen? Long dropdowns are not easy to use as they require lots of scrolling and it can be hard to find the correct value on a large list.
At the bottom of your page put the following:
<a4j:jsFunction name="yourJsFunction" action="#{bean.fetchSelectItems}"
reRender="yourDropdown" />
window.onload = yourJsFunction();
You will have to use AJAX. When the page loads display a empty select box. Then write some JavaScript that will call some URL on your server that will return the options for the select box. And when you get that just populate the select box with those values.
Be advised that your form will be useless to those without JavaScript.

How can I track changes in content on an HTML page after page has loaded

I'm wracking my brain on this one.
After an HTML document loads in a browser, I want to be able to monitor
the page in case any content on it changes for any reason.
Is there a Javascript function with which I can track 'what has
changed' on the webpage. This should be irrespective of the type of content on the HTML page.
I have two examples for you to ponder on:
Ex1:
Say in an HTML document there are two select boxes s1 and s2.
The items list in s2 depends on selections in s1 (page is not
refreshed — that is, s2 is loaded through Ajax or something).
So after the HTML page loads I need to get a notification whenever s2
is populated...
Ex2:
Say, in an HTML page, there's a link, Onclicking which a light pop-up
div is created with some text.
How can I capture the content of this dynamic pop-up?
In all this discussion, I'm not taking into account any particular
format of HTML...the HTML content can be anything...I just need
to keep tracking if any content changes after the page loads...
Ideally I need to achieve this using JavaScript (client-side
scripting).
How can I achieve this?
You can keep track of changes in a textbox using onkeyup. This will tell you every time someone makes a change in a given textbox.
This could potentially fire alot of events. However, using onblur won't necessarily tell you about changes in the textbox and onchange's browser coverage is spotty at best.
If you are using AJAX, you could setup the response function to handle a home grown "event listening" system. So after the response does what it needs to do, it could call any methods that were registered with it, passing in the response text when necessary.
So from your examples above, in Ex1, when the AJAX returns from S1, it would load S2, then call a method saying S2 had changed. In Ex2, when the new AJAX returns the DIV's contents, after loading it into the DIV, it call a different method (or possibly the same depending on what your trying to do) and alerts it that the DIV has new contents.
You could set your "watcher" script as a timer, running a diff function on the current document.body.innerHTML and a stored version captured on load. Depending on how fast the diff will run will give you an idea on what timer interval to use.
This may not capture changes in form elements, but for those, it's easier to loop through all form elements in every form on the page.
Here's someone's diff function I found on Google: http://snowtide.com/jsdifflib