Progressive Enhancement - Changing the way modules load with jQuery
Hey people!
I am currently working on a new home page for our staff and students. I have been developing a page similar to iGoogle, BBC, etc with modules that can be added/edited/deleted and moved so a user can customise their home page.
I can't guarantee that all users will have JavaScript enabled so I have taken the progressive enhancement approach, using PHP to handle users and sessions as well as generating the pages. I have setup a class called init() that handles all the page initialisation (user checks, session setups, generating modules, etc) which also displays all the modules (in the right order).
Everything seems to work fine without any JavaScript needed; however the time has come to make the page more dynamic and user friendly. The first stage is to dynamically load each module, using AJAX requests to build the modules and fade them into view once loaded.
With all that in mind, my question is: How can I load each module dynamically, whilst still retaining the progressive enhancement approach?
I like to consider myself an intermediate level PHP developer; however JavaScript is quite new to me. I understand jQuery, however building a web application like this is a little daunting. If there is anything that appears wrong or badly coded in here then please let me know.
I don't particularly want to post all my source code so please let me know what else you would like to see and I'll post it for you.
Here is the code inside the index.php:
The loadModule() method runs through some checks to get the config options and then includes default.php which I have included here:
The $mod_file is the php file for the module that needs to be loaded. All the parsing of config options and dynamic data is done within each module's source.
Please let me know if you need any more code.
Thanks for your help,
James
I am currently working on a new home page for our staff and students. I have been developing a page similar to iGoogle, BBC, etc with modules that can be added/edited/deleted and moved so a user can customise their home page.
I can't guarantee that all users will have JavaScript enabled so I have taken the progressive enhancement approach, using PHP to handle users and sessions as well as generating the pages. I have setup a class called init() that handles all the page initialisation (user checks, session setups, generating modules, etc) which also displays all the modules (in the right order).
Everything seems to work fine without any JavaScript needed; however the time has come to make the page more dynamic and user friendly. The first stage is to dynamically load each module, using AJAX requests to build the modules and fade them into view once loaded.
With all that in mind, my question is: How can I load each module dynamically, whilst still retaining the progressive enhancement approach?
I like to consider myself an intermediate level PHP developer; however JavaScript is quite new to me. I understand jQuery, however building a web application like this is a little daunting. If there is anything that appears wrong or badly coded in here then please let me know.
I don't particularly want to post all my source code so please let me know what else you would like to see and I'll post it for you.
Here is the code inside the index.php:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/reset.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/text.css"></head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/960.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/jquery-ui-1.8.7.custom.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/desktop.css">
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.4.4.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-ui-1.8.7.custom.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/module-behaviour.js"></script>
<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
require_once('includes/init.php');
require_once('includes/logs.php');
require_once('includes/curl.php');
require_once('includes/parseFeed.php');
$init = new init();
// Include the CSS for each of the modules
foreach($init->dashboard as $module)
{echo '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="modules/'.$module['name'].'/css/'.$module['name'].'.css">'."\n";}
?>
<title>Portal - Personalised Dashboard</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="header">
<h1 id="logo">Portal - Personalised Dashboard</h1>
</div>
<div id="dashboard">
<?php foreach($init->dashboard as $module){$init->loadModule($module);} ?>
</div>
<div id="errors"></div>
</div>
</body>
</html>The loadModule() method runs through some checks to get the config options and then includes default.php which I have included here:
<div class="module <?php echo $mod_name; ?>" id="<?php echo $unique_id; ?>">
<div class="module_wrap">
<h2><?php echo $mod_title; ?></h2>
<div class="module_content">
<?php include $mod_file; ?>
</div>
</div>
</div>The $mod_file is the php file for the module that needs to be loaded. All the parsing of config options and dynamic data is done within each module's source.
Please let me know if you need any more code.
Thanks for your help,
James
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Ray Paseur
Wow, I had forgotten about this question. Maybe the Asker forgot, too!