Re: Templates and AJAX

On Sun, 19 Nov 2006, Buddy Burden wrote:

> We use OpenThought (http://www.openthought.net/) with TT2.
[snip]
> I understand that CGI::Application works well with TT2, but I don't know 
> how difficult it would be to convince the OT code to do that.
I have an app built with TT2 and CGI::Application, and found it _very_ 
easy to plug in AJAX functionality using OpenThought.
For example I have a login page where you can type in your username and 
request your password hint, something like this (stripped down):
   <!-- this is where hint gets pasted in -->
   <p id="password_hint">&nbsp;</p>

   <form method="POST" action="login">
      Username: <input type="text" name="username" /><br />
      <a href="#" onclick="showHint();return false">Show Hint</a>
   </form>

   <script>
      // Pass the current value of "username" form field
      // to the CGI::Application runmode "show_pw_hint":
      function showHint {
         OpenThought.CallUrl('[% self_url %]/show_pw_hint', 'username');
      }
   </script>

Then my CGI::Application runmode looks like this (error handling stripped 
out):
   sub show_pw_hint
   {
      my $self     = shift;
      my $username = $self->query->param('username');
      my $hint     = ... DB lookup of hint for $username ... ;

      # Replace content of "password_hint" HTML element,
      # and set focus to "username" form field:
      return $self->_do_OT({
         html        => {password_hint => "Your hint is: $hint"},
         focus       => 'username',
         error       => $any_error_msg,
         #fields     => {},
         #javascript => '',
      });
   }

   # Helper function to do OpenThought stuff:
   #
   sub _do_OT
   {
      my ($self, $args) = @_;
      my $error = delete $args->{error};

      my $OT = OpenThought2->new();

      if ($error) {
         my $url =  $self->param('self_url') .
                          '/error_runmode?msg=' . uri_escape($error);
         return $OT->parse_and_output({url => $url});
      }
      else {
         return $OT->parse_and_output($args);
      }
   }



Larry