There's an advantage for using JSPs if the response needs to be templated. I'm not saying we need it at this moment, but sometimes plain XHTML is not good enough, since the template writer might need to rewrite it for his needs. In which case we don't want to force them to rewrite the ActionBean. In general, returning non- templateable XHTML could be considered bad, since it forces a particular content structure, which might not go well with your template ideas.

So I wouldn't dismiss it so readily. We need to figure out in which cases (if any) it actually is useful to template the response. Reference:

http://stripesframework.org/display/stripes/AJAX+even+easier


/Janne

On 15 Jun 2009, at 06:03, Andrew Jaquith wrote:

Dirk-- some quick comments before I go off-grid for a few weeks:

I want to get away from using JSPs as part of AJAX response processing. Instead, it would be cleaner to use the response (Resolution) returned by Stripes without routing responses through JSPs. This could be done in one of two ways. The event handler method could return:

1) a StreamingResolution that contains the XHTML. The event method would generate the XHTML. All the client does is insert it into the DOM.

2) a JavaScriptResolution that contains the JSON objects, which the client would eval, create elements for, and insert into the DOM.

(2) is a little more complex on the client side, but probably less taxing for the server. This would be a good way to do ajaxSearch.

As for your other comments: the live preview feels like it should be a function of editing, and thus EditActionBean. But your instinct was basically right -- it should be a core funtion, not a template- specific thing.

Andrew

On Jun 14, 2009, at 10:19, Dirk Frederickx <[email protected]> wrote:

Andrew, e.a.,

Some notes on the use of ajax in the template jsp's and the related
javascript.
I'll check in some updates to the javascript with new handlers to support
ajax.


There are 2 cases:

1) AJAX-calls to retrieve xhtml snippets.

 In v2.x this is done through some jsp-helper-pages which return
 the xhtml snippets. (not full html pages)

It is currenlty used for retrieving the lucene search results for the
 FindContent.jsp (old AJAXSearch.jsp);  the live-preview function
 during editing (old AJAXPreview.jsp); and the %%category popup
 to retrieve the list of referring-pages. (old AJAXCategories.jsp)

 Reading the note of Andrew, we would like to move to stripes' event
handlers
to deliver these ajax requests. In most cases, we'd still need some jsp's
to finally
 deliver the returned xhtml.

 Notice that the returned xhtml in these
 cases should only return a small snippet, and not a complete
jspwiki-page.
 (with header, footer, favorites, etc...)

 Client side:

 /* new api */
 Wiki.ajax( url (==> of the Stripes ActionBean), {
  action: ==> Stripes event to be invoked
  params: ==> FORM-element or javascript-object, will be converted to
&parm=value
  update: ==> optional, DOM-element to update with xhtml snippet
  onComplete: ==> callback handler on reception of the html response
 });

 Example:
 Wiki.ajax('Search.jsp', {
action: 'ajaxSearch',
params: { query:'search-text', maxItems:20 },
update: $('dom-element'),
onComplete:function(){
alert('ajax - done');
}
});
 or
 Wiki.ajax('Search.jsp', {
action: 'ajaxSearch',
params:$('searchform2'), ==> automatically retrieve params
from the form
update: $('searchResult2'),
onComplete:function(){
alert('ajax - done');
}
});


  Notes/Questions:

  * The current ajaxSearch event invokes the full FindContent.jsp.
    It rather should return the search-result xhtml snippet inside
#searchResult2.
    In v2.x, the FindContent.jsp invoked/included the
    AJAXSearch.jsp just to deliver that snippet of search-results.
    I'd suggest to revert back to that solution, but give it a better
name:
    FindContent, invokinkg FindResult.jsp


  * 'live-preview' : I suggest to promote this generic function to a
top-level jsp, rather than an template jsp. We could also opt for an
    extra AJAX-event on the existing ViewActionBean


* AJAXCategories : This jsp is actually only invoking a jspwiki- plugin. Probably this would better be a JSON based ajax event. (see below)
    Or, we could consider to build a generic solution to invoke
asynchronous
    any of the installed plugins ?


2) AJAX-calls to retrieve JSON objects
 (eg. upload progress tracking, find partial page matches)

 In v2.x this uses server-side the json-rpc.

We used this for retrieving a list of pagenames with partial match in the quick-navigation drop-down (search.findPages), populate the suggestion popup during edit (search.getSuggestions) and to retrieve the progress
 value when upload attachements. (progressTracker.getProgress)

 Client-side:

 //v2.x example
 Wiki.jsonrpc('search.findPages', ['Janne',20], function(result){
   //do something with the result json object
 });

 Notes:
* We'll still need to select java json tools to read/write server side
   the JSON objects. Unless we'll stick to json-rpc.

 * The findPages and getSuggestion events (currently in
search.SearchManager)
could be added to the SearchActionBean, to keep all kinds of searching
   together.

 * The getProgress could be added to AttachmentActionBean


dirk

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