Accessing URL executes JavaScript - javascript

I've coded an HTML page using jQuery for loading content. Now if I want to link directly to a submenu, is this possible to do with JavaScript?
So for example if someone goes to www.mydomain.com/submenu1/
then some JavaScript code will execute and load the needed contents?
Thanks a lot :)
Is it possible to realize that with htaccess?

You will more likely want to have a URL structure that only needs a page to load from the server once, then the server is only queried by JavaScript XMLHttpRequests. Loading content based on a "hard" URL would be pointless, since you're doing a server request anyways and might as well return the content in the response.
For keeping addresses unique while still keeping the "hard" URL the same (preventing multiple server requests), you can use the hash/anchor part of the URL. This means your address might look something like this: http://www.example.com/#/submenu1/
The #/submenu1/ part stays on the client, so only / on www.example.com is requested. Then it's up to your JavaScript to load the content relevant to /submenu1/. See a page of mine for an example of this: http://blixt.org/js#project/hash?view=code
Also have a look at this question: Keeping history of hash/anchor changes in JavaScript

Related

dynamically generate content for a page when clicking on product

everyone. I am making a website with t-shirts. I dynamically generate preview cards for products using a JSON file but I also need to generate content for an HTML file when clicking on the card. So, when I click on it, a new HTML page opens like product.html?product_id=id. I do not understand how to check for id or this part ?prodcut_id=id, and based on id it generates content for the page. Can anyone please link some guides or good solutions, I don't understand anything :(.
It sounds like you want the user's browser to ask the server to load a particular page based on the value of a variable called product_id.
The way a browser talks to a server is an HTTP Request, about which you can learn all the basics on javascipt.info and/or MDN.
The ?product_id=id is called the 'query' part of the URL, about which you can learn more on MDN and Wikipedia.
A request that gets a page with this kind of URL from the server is usually a GET request, which is simpler and requires less security than the more common and versatile POST request type.
You may notice some of the resources talking about AJAX requests (which are used to update part of the current page without reloading the whole thing), but you won't need to worry about this since you're just trying to have the browser navigate to a new page.
Your server needs to have some code to handle any such requests, basically saying:
"If anybody sends an HTTP GET request here, look at the value of the product_id variable and compare it to my available HTML files. If there's a match, send a response with the matching file, and if there's no match, send a page that says 'Error 404'."
That's the quick overview anyway. The resources will tell you much more about the details.
There are some solutions, how you can get the parameters from the url:
Get ID from URL with jQuery
It would also makes sense to understand what is a REST Api and how to build a own one, because i think you dont have a backend at the moment.
Here some refs:
https://www.conceptatech.com/blog/difference-front-end-back-end-development
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/nodejs/nodejs_restful_api.htm

Custom url without reloading page and related issues

Okay so there are solutions for this as in Modify the URL without reloading the page but I have one question regarding this.
So here is what I plan to do (let's assume my web address is example.com)
1. using pushState I plan to change the browser address to example.com/myprofile/myalbum. So to be clear, this new url may or may not exists but the browser address is changed regardless. In our case this url doesn't actually exist but we are using the address to mark a changed state of the webpage.
2. use ajax to load data regarding "myprofile > myalbum" to the same page.
But now here's the issue I have been thinking about. What if a user loads example.com/myprofile/myalbum directly on a, let's say, new tab. This page clearly throws a not found error because it doesn't exist.
So how do I load ajax corresponding to this fake url? For example http://www.usatoday.com/news/ seems to do this well (unless that's an iframe, which wouldn't be so nice).
You can add rewrite rules to your webserver, converting either specific URL's or some matching a pattern to something that your scripts can use to show the right page. You can have it rewrite the URL only internally, so the user still see the original URL in the browser. Such as:
RewriteRule /myprofile/(\w*) /index.php?path=/myprofile/$1
Different webservers will probably have different syntax, but they will be similar.

Handling ajax URLs from different pages?

So I have my site at http://example.com/foo/ (under a directory, the main domain is for something else).
Using .htaccess, I've set up my pages so the URLs look like http://example.com/foo/about/, http://example.com/foo/polls/, http://example.com/foo/registration/, etc. This works great and the site loads fine and can be traversed without any Javascript issues.
Now, I'd like to add some AJAX functionality to the navigation. If I'm on http://example.com/foo/ and I click the navigation for "About", it changes the URL to http://example.com/foo/#about and dynamically loads the about page in one section of the site. I also have this working.
I have two problems which involve handling switching between AJAX and non-AJAX URLs.
If I'm on http://example.com/foo/about/ and I click on polls, it would look like http://example.com/foo/about/#polls which doesn't look very pretty. Ideally, I'd want every AJAX URL to be formatted with just the main directory and a hash, like http://example.com/foo/#about.
Should I handle it by forcing an actual (non-AJAX) redirect to the index page with a hash symbol then load it from there?
The other problem is the reverse. If I send http://example.com/foo/#about to someone who has Javascript disabled, or maybe if someone links to it and a bot crawls that link, is there any way to handle that to redirect to the correct non-AJAX page or is this just an unfortunate fact of life I'll have to deal with?
If you need non-javascript support, I'd change all your urls directly to the pages. Like http://example.com/foo/#about to http://example.com/foo/about/
Then, the javascript can intercept it, call event.preventDefault(), and 'redirect' it to #about, which will follow your ajax functionality.
If the client doesn't have javascript, it will go to http://example.com/foo/about/ as normal.
As for being on http://example.com/foo/about/, a javascript client should never get here as they will always be redirected to hashtags.
1) if you redirect to the main page and then use ajax to load the about page that would just not make much sense. what you should do is make everything work through ajax : there should never be a http://example.com/foo/about/ in the first place only http://example.com/foo/#about then you just update the hash and the content when you click on polls.
2) there is no way to avoid, sorry.

HTML inside JS? Or in separate html file(load via $.ajax or $.load)

What would be the better/best solution? previously all my markup were all initialized in an html file,
index.php:
//login block
<div id="login">
form ...
</div>
so whenever I logged in, I have to remove/hide these login block by using $.ajax to check if there's an existing session then hide the whole login markup ( .hide() ) and show a different markup for logged in users.
The problem with this is that, it waits for the whole document to load before it executes the script, so the unintended/hidden markup will show and then vanished quickly upon page load.
I also tried putting the markup inline inside javascript, but I think it violates the "Unobtrusive" idea in js.
e.g.
var markup_arr = [
'<h4>Login</h4>',
'<form></form>'
];
var markup = markup_arr.join('');
So I end up with this
Current solution: separate html file and loading it using jQuery's $.load()
What are you using, which are the best practices and which one loads fast? Or are there any better solution out there that you can suggest? Thanks.
EDIT:
These are all javascript/ajax processes, so I'm not looking for a server side solution(include,require_once)
There's no correct answer to this. My view is you want to deliver the minimum amount of data to your users, in the minimum number of requests. It's all about finding the right balance. Depending on your users the balance will change to.
For me, I'd prefer sending two files that are 5kB each, rather than four that are 2kB. You're sending more data, but as there are less requests it should be just as quick. I'd think that delivering it as part of the Javascript might be best. Note it doesn't necessarily need to be the same file, although I'd deliver it as one - have a simple (PHP etc) script which joins the code file and the data file into one, then passes it out
The other thing I'd make sure is that you're caching everything as best you can. Having a slightly bigger file isn't generally an issue if you only have to download it once and it caches for a year. If your users are downloading a larger file every day, or worse, every page view it becomes an issue.
What I would do is check server side if the session exists, and include your separate "html" (php/rb/py/asp/whatever really) file if the session exist, and the login form if not. When the user logs, ajax would answer the same "html" file. (if I understand your problem correctly, and the login form is a single line in the page header).

Performing JS methods on a URL submitted by the user?

I haven't found an answer to this, and since I'm pretty new to JS, I don't know if it's even possible.
I have a regular HTML form, where the only field is a user types in a URL (any URL) and clicks submit.
The URL will "be sent" to JS code that stores this URL in some variable, I guess. Basically, I need to be able to call getElementsByTagName() on any URL submitted by the user.
My point is to count up the number of times a URL contains a specified element, which I do know how to do :)
How do I interpret a URL submitted through a form by someone and then take that URL and be able to perform methods (such as getElementsById) on it? I want to return the count of the number of elements to the user.
Any ideas? Can this all be done in JS? Is this possible?
When you say "URL," I assume you are talking about the actual webpage and not the url string. In other words, you want to load the entire DOM into a javascript variable and then parse it with getElementsByTagName(), etc. Javascript cannot load this webpage due to the Same Origin Policy, unless users can only submit pages that are on the same domain as your site. If that was the case, you could use a frame. Otherwise, JS can't do it without Jsonp, which isn't going to work in this case.
However, all is not lost. You can have your JS make an asynchronous request (ajax) to your own server. Your server scripting language /can/ get the entire DOM of the webpage (e.g. PHP can do this with cURL). Then it can send the entire string back to JS as xml that can be parsed. Good luck.
You can't really do that from the client (the web browser) with nothing but Javascript, because security rules will prevent your page from fetching and examining content from a different domain. You'll need to send the URL to a server and have it do the work.

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