Ajax Overview

The Ajax plugin helps you request data without refreshing the page. The plugin closely resembles the Prototype library's API. If you are looking for simple Ajax requests without Prototype's bluk, just include JavaScriptMVC's 'ajax' plugin.

Install

Include the ajax plugin. This automatically gets included by many other plugins (controller, view, core).

include.plugins('ajax')

Use

The ajax plugin provides one general purpose class, Ajax.Request, for ajax functionality. It is typically used to asynchronously request a response from a url, and to callback a function with the data from that response.

new Ajax.Request(url, options) -> XMLHttpRequest

Simple Example

This requests data from '/my_data.html' and shows the response's text in an alert box:

callback = function(transport){  // creates a callback function.  Ajax.Request calls back with
  alert(transport.responseText)  // transport.responseText contains the text returned by the request
};

new Ajax.Request(
  '/my_data.html',               // the url we send the request to
  { 
    method: 'get',               // we perform a get request
    onComplete: callback         // sets the callback function
  }
);

There are a few important points to notice about this example:

• Callbacks get passed back the transport. You can access the response text from transport.responseText and the status of the request from transport.status.
• The new keyword is the only way to correctly create a new request.
• The available options are documented in the ajax api.