Using AJAX

phpBB contains a set of functions to make it very easy to have links use AJAX. This means doing requests in JavaScript without reloading the whole page.

Supported elements
By default following elements can be ajaxified:


 * Links ()
 * Forms

Simple usage
To do so, simply add a data-ajax="true" attribute to the element. Here's an example:

link

This will make an AJAX call when the user clicks the link, instead of opening that page in the current browser tab.

Optionally you can add the data-refresh="true" attribute, which will refresh the page after the action is complete. While this can be useful, you should try to use ajax events whenever possible.

Forms
To ajaxify a form you use the same technique as with the link. Just add the data-ajax attribute to the form tag:



Whenever the form is submitted, an AJAX call will be done to the action of the form.

Ajax events
In most cases you will want to do something after the action is complete. You can do this by setting the data-ajax attribute to the event name you want to use. This will be a combination of your MOD name and the action that is happening.

link

This will allow you to bind to your custom ajax event by adding a callback:

phpbb.addAjaxCallback('mymod.link_remove', function {   $(this).remove; });

Once the AJAX response comes back, the callback is executed. Inside the function that is used "this" refers to the Node where you applied data-ajax="mymod.link_remove" which is in this case the link. To use the jQuery's functions you need to wrap the Node again like it appears in the example ($(this)).

Accessing the response
If you need to, you can access the response in your callback. The response body gets passed as the single argument to your callback. So you could do something like this:

phpbb.addAjaxCallback('mymod.link_remove', function(response) {   $('.my-container').html(response); });

This would dump the entire response into a div.

However it is recommended to return a JSON response. This means that you can send any data to the browser. It can be an associative array that you can then access from JavaScript. An example of handling a JSON response is this:

phpbb.addAjaxCallback('mymod.link_remove', function(data) {   $(this).text(data.NEW_TEXT); });

This will take the NEW_TEXT variable from the response and set the text of the element to that value.

On the server side you need to check if the current request is an AJAX request. If it is, you should return JSON instead of a rendered page. You can send any data you need on the client. Here is an example:

if ($request->is_ajax) {   $new_text = $user->lang($activated ? 'ACTIVATE' : 'DEACTIVATE'); $data = array('NEW_TEXT' => $new_text); $json_response = new phpbb_json_response; $json_response->send($data); } // render normal response here

The server will send a response like this:

{"NEW_TEXT": "Deactivate"}

The AJAX function will take care of decoding this into a JavaScript object, so you can use it directly.

Refreshing the page
If you want to refresh the page after a successful operation, you can add the data-refresh=true attribute. This will make the page automatically refresh after the AJAX request is complete:

link

Error Handling
Whenever there is an error for an AJAX request, a generic alert message will be shown to the user. This should obviously never happen, but it might. An error is a 4xx or 5xx HTTP status code response from the server.

Advanced usage
The internally used phpbb.ajaxify function can also be called manually. For more information about that, please refer to JavaScript_Function.phpbb.ajaxify.