Basic AJAX help?

Hello,

I’ve been searching the forums for some simple AJAX tutorial info, and I’m obviously missing something blatantly obvious that everyone else seems to get.

In this thread http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=33206.0 Jason mentions:

I never use index-ajax.php or any other custom ajax processor. MODx delivers Ajax requests from documents just fine; you simply select no template and make sure the document returns only what you need. MODx definitely supports this now, and I’d never do it any other way.

I’ve seen similar comments in other threads about AJAX, and I’m just not getting it. Could someone explain this to me in 7th grade terms? I want to have an alphabetical list (A, B, C, etc.) at the top of my page, and when I click a letter (e.g. "B") the bottom section of the page refreshes to show the entries for "B". Should be pretty simple, yes? BTW, I’m using jquery.

Thanks,

Jonathan

Basically you’ll create a new document with a snippet having your AJAX processing code. Tell the AJAX code on your web page to get its data from that new document.

I installed this http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/ajax_example_suggest.asp

• Created the javascript file and set a full url - http://www.foo.bar/alias (FURL ON)


• Created the snippet (see php example):
  - Change "q" to another request letter e.g. "s" ALSO IN JAVASCRIPT FILE
  - Change to "return" instead of "echo" in the end.


• Created a document (blank template) with snippet call.

Now just set javascript and form on a document and it works!

Next tutorial: PHP Example - AJAX and MySQL

Thanks for the pointers. I’ll give it a shot and report back.