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The ajax theme extends the xhtml theme, providing with AJAX features on top of everything provided by its parent theme. These AJAX features are. The theme uses the popular DOJO AJAX/JavaScript toolkit. AJAX features include:

• AJAX Client Side Validation
• Remote form submission support (works with the submit tag as well)
• An advanced div template that provides dynamic reloading of partial HTML
• An advanced a template that provides the ability to load and evaluate JavaScript remotely
• An AJAX-only tabbedPanel implementation

...

• A rich pub-sub event model
• Interactive autocomplete tag

See also: Ajax tags

Browser Compatibility

AJAX (as a technology) uses a browser-side scripting component that varies between browers (and sometimes versions). To hide those differences from the developer, we utilize the dojo toolkit (http://www.dojotoolkit.org). Several browsers are supported by dojo, and any UI's created with the ajax theme should act the same way for supported browsers. The supported browsers are:

• IE 5.5+
• FF 1.0+
• Latest Safari (on up-to-date OS versions)
• Latest Opera
• Latest Konqueror

Extending the AJAX Theme

The wrapping behavior provided by this technique utilized by the ajax theme is almost exactly like that provided by the xhtml theme. The only difference is that much like xhtml theme, but the controlheader.ftl template is slightly a wee bit different:

{snippet:id=all|lang=xml|url=webwork/src/java/template/ajax/controlheader.ftl}

.

<#if parameters.label?if_exists != "">
	<#include "/${parameters.templateDir}/xhtml/controlheader.ftl" />
</#if>
<#if parameters.form?exists && parameters.form.validate?default(false) == true>
	<#-- can't mutate the data model in freemarker -->
    <#if parameters.onblur?exists>
        ${tag.addParameter('onblur', "validate(this);${parameters.onblur}")}
    <#else>
        ${tag.addParameter('onblur', "validate(this);")}
    </#if>
</#if>

The header This provides for AJAX Client Side Validation by checking if the validate attribute is set to true. If it is, a validation request is made on each onblur event for a HTML Struts Tags, a validation request is made. Some people don't like the onblur behavior and ; they would rather a more advanced timer (say, 200ms) be kicked off after every keystroke. You can override this template and provide that type of behavior if you would like.

Special

...

Interest

Three ajax_xhtml templates of special interest are head, div, and a.

• ajax head template
• ajax div template
• ajax a template
• ajax tabbedpanel tag
ajax submit tag

In addition to these templates, be familiar with the ajax event system provided by the framework and Dojo.