Ajax-based content browsing
February 6th, 2006
I love Friday. For several reasons. One of those reasons is the freedom I get at my job that day. The freedom to be creative and to work out cool ideas. Last Friday was such a day.
We recently installed the excellent AJAX-TreeMenu (a contribution by Daniel Beyer) at our sites, and it really speeds up navigating through large site structures. Last Friday I also wanted to test the eZObjectrelationbrowse datatype. The changelog mentions that the datatype uses Ajax to generate dynamically filterable lists. That sounds great! Every speedup of common tasks is welcome. Again my life as eZ publish developer and administrator would become easier, impatient and lazy as I am when I need to select objects to make object relations. But unfortunately, I couldn’t get the dynamic lists to work 
Inspired by the idea behind the eZObjectrelationbrowse datatype, I started to code my own datatype. In fact it also could have been a module view. I just wanted to try to make an Ajax-based content browser. Really getting the datatype to work wasn’t my priority, and in it’s current state it doesn’t store anything yet. But the Ajax-based browsing works!
Maybe an Ajax-based content browser can also be used for the existing object relation datatypes. It’s definitely worth an investigation.
Paul Borgermans also had some really great suggestions. In addtion to the inline browser, an Ajax-based search (or at least a subtree fetch with an attribute filter on the object’s name) could be implemented for use with the object relation datatypes. The process of browsing for an object would become again a little bit faster, at least if you know (a part of) the name of the object. Thanks Paul!
Today I uploaded the datatype with the Ajax-based browser to the community SVN repository. You can checkout your copy at http://pubsvn.ez.no/community/trunk/extension/sckobjbrowse. The datatype depends on the xajax extension, so first install and enable that one and make sure you insert the needed javascript code in your pagelayout templates by using the xajax_javascript template operator. I also recommend to move the xajax.ini settings file from the xajax extension to the settings directory of your eZ publish installation. As mentioned before, the datatype itself doesn’t work yet!
If somebody wants to work together on this extension or any other, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Entry Filed under: eZ Publish
2 Comments Add your own
1. Gabriel Ambuehl | February 6th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
That is really really neat. As soon as my exams are over I will try to integrate it into enhancedobjectrelation. I had been meaning to integrate AJAX into it for a while but somehow never quite came round to do it!
2. Daniel Beyer | March 22nd, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Hi,
in fact we at Young Media Concepts have an extension called ymcODCL. ODCL stands for On Demand Content Loader. It is an easy to install extension allowing you to add popups like the sitemap on http://www.seepeople.de. But it also has support to replace the normal content ({$module_result.content} via ajax – which means you don’t have to reload your whole page.
We’re currently testing the On Demand content replacement int the admin area. So far it’s working just fine.
We will release this extension as soon we have the standard-admin templates for the extension ready (we’re using an optimised – and so adapted – admin view).
Think this is interesting for you to know – so you don’t have to do this by yourself on one of your friedays
If you want to have a quick look on the extension before we release it on ez.no, feel free to contact me.
Greetings, Daniel.
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