Rendering a partial with ajax/jquery

[arturo drlt]

Hi there i have this issue I have a view that render a partial for each
member inside the object @foo and I have a function for infinite scroll
so the server will be doing request after request while scrolling down
but I don't know exactly how to make this work here is some of my code:


def popular
@foo = Foo.new

respond_to do |format|
response = @foo.popular
...

flash[:notice] = "Welcome."
format.html { render popular_foo_path}
....
end
end
end

views/foo/popular

- @foo.each do |f|
= render(:partial => "popular_foo", :locals => { :foo => f})

views/foo/_popular_foo

- f['thumbs'].each do |thumb|
= image_tag(thumb['thumburl'].to_s, :alt => "thumb", :class =>
"thumb-popular")

every time you scrolldown to certain height a fuction
$(document).infinite_scroll is called and i have it configured to make a
new call to the method popular and I can see in the console and in the
firebug that it do the request and succeed but it won't render the next
results.

--
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[tonypm]

From the question you have posed, and the information you have provided, there is not a simple 'do this' answer.  You need to get a bit further down the path of what you want to achieve.  (unless someone knows some magic foo that I am unaware of).

Looking at what you have so far, it would seem that you have the basic functionality of the page, and you have an idea of what you want to achieve, but you do not yet appear to have a strategy or plan for how you are going to achieve it.  I have never implemented continuous scroll, but giving it some cursory thought, I would begin by asking myself some questions.

1.  How is the page update going to take place when I extend the contents.  

     eg.  - replace the whole page each time the list updates

            or -  replace the list section 

            or - add additional items at the end

     Do I let the page size continue to grow indefinitely or do I remove some items from the other end.

2.  If I am going to manage addition/deletion of items.  The items will probably be best structured in an an html list or table, and each may need a unique id, or can I just append/prepend  to the list of items.

3. What mechanism will I use to identify the next 'page' of items I want to add to the list.

4.  How is my controller going to get the correct list of items to add? ie what paging mechanism am I using.

5.  How am I going to handle the ajax response that contains the items.  I am going to need some js code to append/prepend or insert the items into the list.  

6.  What form will my response be in.  I can send some javascript using an erb template to insert the items, or I could have a js function on the browser side ready to handle the response (eg as a success callback handler.)  Or I could return data as json and handle the paging more fully in the browser js.

7.  Finally having thought about all this, I would do some googling to see if someone has already implemented such a thing in a form I could learn from, or is there maybe a js library that might already provide most of the functionality I require.  

I am sorry this is not a direct answer, but hopefully it may help to clarify what you are trying to achieve and how you are going to go about it.

Tonypm

[Walter Lee Davis]

The best advice I have seen on this topic so far is to first walk, then run. Start by setting up traditional (kaminari, will_paginate) pagination. Get that working solidly. Then layer on the JavaScript to call that pagination in your page, based on the simple test: "is this marker item visible on screen or not?".

The benefit to this approach is that you silently cater to non-scripted visitors, like Google, who you ignore at your peril.

Walter

[arturo drlt]

Tony Martin wrote in post #1082196:

> From the question you have posed, and the information you have provided,

> 7. Finally having thought about all this, I would do some googling to
> see
> if someone has already implemented such a thing in a form I could learn
> from, or is there maybe a js library that might already provide most of
> the
> functionality I require.
>
> I am sorry this is not a direct answer, but hopefully it may help to
> clarify what you are trying to achieve and how you are going to go about
> it.
>
>
> Tonypm

After giving some serious thought to this matter and reading all your
advices my last thinking was "I really don't have that high knowledge of
js nor ajax so lets search the solution in other way, more
rails-already-implemented solution"

So I found this plug-in called Pageless that is designed for rails and
after some work I could made it work.