Talk:AJAX

Moving from MooTools to Native Ajax

Currently our Ajax extensions (SimpleForms and Livelets) use the MooTools JavaScript framework. The most commonly used ajax process is to post a form to the server and have the response directed to the innerHTML property of an element having a particular id attribute. The mootools syntax for achieving this functionality is: <js> $('form-id').send({update:$('target-id')}) </js> where form-id specifies the id attribute of the form whose content we want to send to the server, and target-id is the id attribute of the element the servers response should be appear within (usually a div element).

The MediaWiki equivalent of this is a JavaScript function from ajax.js called sajax_do_call, which is used as follows: <js> sajax_request_type = 'POST' // default is GET sajax_do_call('php-function',[data],document.getElementById('target-id')); </js>

It says in MW:Manual:Parameters to index.php regarding action=ajax, that a PHP function in AjaxFunctions.php will be executed. That module contains wfSajaxSearch (search for articles of title similar to a search term) and wfAjaxWatch (watch/unwatch a page). Note that $wgUseAjax must be set to true and the only callable functions are those in the array $wgAjaxExportList (which is also modified by the variables $wgAjaxSearch and $wgAjaxWatch). In addition to action=ajax, there is rs (the function name, e.g. rs=wfSajaxSearch), rsargs[] (an array of arguments to the function (e.g., rsargs[]=abcd passes the abcd string to the function). There is a JavaScript function for calling this action in ajax.js.

• The callable functions listed in $wgAjaxExportList are just any global PHP functions
• See also Extension talk:SimpleForms.php