Need some Drupal FAPI/AJAX advice

The problem is not that no one has answered this need, but that
practically everyone has--each in a different way.

The Popups module http://drupal.org/project/popups and Lightbox2
http://drupal.org/project/lightbox2 each provide some version,
http://drupal.org/project/ajax provides server-side handling of ajax
form submission, to mention just a few.

My advice though would be to start with Chaos tools,
http://drupal.org/project/ctools. It's the best abstracted approach--and
its approach to AJAX forms the basis of AJAX in D7.

Josh Miller wrote:
>
> I'm trying to figure out how best to make the following happen, any
> pointers/documentation/example modules would be awesome:
>
>  
>

Josh Miller wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out how best to make the following happen, any
> pointers/documentation/example modules would be awesome:
>

The CTools module contains an AJAX framework which is the foundation for
the AJAX framework in Drupal 7 that is designed to accomplish tasks
exactly like this. It also includes multi-step wizard tools for forms.

http://drupal.org/project/feedback

________________________________

        From: development-bounces@...
[mailto:development-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Josh Miller
        Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 3:39 PM
        To: development@...
        Subject: [development] Need some Drupal FAPI/AJAX advice
       
       

        I'm trying to figure out how best to make the following happen, any
pointers/documentation/example modules would be awesome:

         

        1) Click a button on the webpage

        2) Jquery fires off a request for a unique form that is not a node
or menu or anything else

        3) Somehow drupal understands the url that I use and fires the
appropriate function

        4) mymodule_send_form() will invoke drupal_get_form() (maybe?)

        5) Jquery recieves the rendered form, adds stuff to it via hidden
inputs like x & y, $_Get['q'], $user->id, etc.

        6) user can fill it out

        7) Jquery sends data back to be saved/verified

        8) Jquery recieves a final themed output of content

        9) Repeat as many times as user wants on the same page by clicking
the button mentioned in #1
       
       

        What has me very confused is that I need to send and receive themed
output, but without the entire site. Simply need chunks of final output to
be sent back and forth. After a discussion on #drupal the other night I
determined that AHAH is not exactly designed to do entire forms.
       
        If anyone is interested (I know from a tweet discussion that
bangpound is) I've got a working javascript framework for adding comments to
entire pages. I'm going to call this module "critique" and it's main use
will be turning it on and having clients add comments to pages (like you
would for PDFs or Word Documents). The problem is I can't decide how to
architect the backend as it will have to be very AJAX-y.
       
       

        I think I know more about Drupal 7 (having spent the most time in D7
issue que), but I'd like a working version in Drupal 6 first.

       
        Josh

         

         

        _____________________________________

        Josh Miller

        Web / Technology Director

         

        Haan Marketing + Communications

        http://www.haanmc.com/

        123 N. 8th Street, Lafayette, IN  47902-0350

         

        T. 765.423.5470

        F. 765-742-2881

         

AHAH/AJAX does do fine with a complete form. You can process a part of a form, the whole form, or even do HTML replacement on something outside the form.  I'm still not sure it's what you want, of course.

The Examples module (http://drupal.org/project/examples) now has both D6 and D7 versions of the AHAH example.

There is a D6 AHAH tutorial at http://randyfay.com/ahah.

-Randy




--
Randy Fay
Drupal Development, troubleshooting, and debugging
randy@...
+1  970.462.7450