My jQuery Mobile app consists of a single index.html page and contains only one page with a link on startup:
<div data-role="page">
<div data-role="content">
<a id="startPageLink" href="startPage">start</a>
</div>
</div>
When the user clicks on the start link, I want to load the content for the startPage from my JSON api asynchronously. On the callback I would like to create all the required DOM elements for startPage via JavaScript and add the content to it. I have created a createStartPage(data) method for this.
What is the right way to implement such dynamically created pages, so that opening index.html#startPage also works? I think there should be a way to hook into $.mobile.changePage() to include custom loading/page-creation code, but I did not find anything. Or is there a better solution for this problem?
I had some time to mess around with this and I've found a solution that works (tested).
SOME NOTES:
- the javascript encapsulated in $(document).ready(); is for dynamically creating a page if the user navigates to your index.html file with a hash mark already appended (i.e. index.html#some_hash_mark).
- The function, create_page(page_id) is for creating a page from a link (or programatically if you like).
- Note that the jquery core script and the jquery mobile css are loaded before the $(document).ready() statement but that the jquery mobile script is loaded after.
- See that the body tag has been given an id that is refrenced when appending pages to it.
Document Sample
<!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="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0a4.1/jquery.mobile-1.0a4.1.min.css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function() {
//check if hash exists and that it is not for the home screen
if (window.location.hash != '' && window.location.hash != '#page_0') {
//set whatever content you want to put into the new page
var content_string = 'Some ' + window.location.hash + ' text...<br><br><a href="#page_0">go to home screen</a>';
//append the new page onto the end of the body
$('#page_body').append('<div data-role="page" id="' + window.location.hash.replace('#','') + '"><div data-role="content">' + content_string + '</div></div>');
//add a link on the home screen to navaigate to the new page (just so nav isn't broken if user goes from new page to home screen)
$('#page_0 div[data-role="content"]').append('<br><br><a href="#' + window.location.hash.replace('#','') + '">go to ' + window.location.hash.replace('#','') + ' page</a>');
}
});
function create_page(page_id) {
//set whatever content you want to put into the new page
var string = 'FOO BAR page...<br><br><a href="#page_0">return to home screen</a>';
//append the new page onto the end of the body
$('#page_body').append('<div data-role="page" id="' + page_id + '"><div data-role="content">' + string + '</div></div>');
//initialize the new page
$.mobile.initializePage();
//navigate to the new page
$.mobile.changePage("#" + page_id, "pop", false, true);
//add a link on the home screen to navaigate to the new page (just so nav isn't broken if user goes from new page to home screen)
$('#page_0 div[data-role="content"]').append('<br><br><a href="#' + page_id + '">go to ' + page_id + ' page</a>');
//refresh the home screen so new link is given proper css
$('#page_0 div[data-role="content"]').page();
}
</script>
<title>Fixed Headers Example</title>
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0a4.1/jquery.mobile-1.0a4.1.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body id="page_body">
<div data-role="page" id="page_0">
<div data-role="content">Some #page_0 text...<br><br><a href="javascript: create_page('foo_bar_page');">create new page</a></div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
To me Jasper solution doesn't work but i've found this solution that look cleaner and work fine
Here is my method for dynamically adding content to my Jquery Mobile websites:
First I create a "wrapper" data-role=page div like so:
<div data-role="page" id="my_page_id">
<div data-role="content">
<script>
$('#my_page_id').live('pageshow', function() {
my_data_loading_function('my_page_id');
});
</script>
<div id="my_page_id-content"></div>
</div><!--/content-->
</div><!--/page-->
Next I load data from an external source into a div tag located in my "wrapper" page:
function my_data_loading_function(page) {
if ($('#' + page + '-content').is(':empty')) {
$.mobile.pageLoading();
$('#' + page + '-content').load("my_external_script.php", function() {
$.mobile.pageLoading(true);
$('#' + page + '-content ul').listview();
$('#' + page + '-content ul').page();
});
}
}
Some Notes:
$.mobile.pageLoading(); and $.mobile.pageLoading(true); show and hide (respectively) the Jquery Mobile loading spinner.
if ($('#' + page + '-content').is(':empty')) { allows the user to navaigate away from the dynamically created page and then come back and not have to re-load the data until a full page refresh occurs.
My dynamically created page included mostly a list so listview() makes the jquery mobile framework refresh the list selected to add the proper css, page() does the same to other page elements; however you may only need to use one or the other depending on your content (or none at all if its just plain text).
I realize this isn't creating a whole page dynamically because the "wrapper" page is already hard-coded but if you want to add a whole new page you can probably use something like: (untested)
$(document).append('<div data-role="page" id="my_page_id"><div data-role="content">FOO BAR</div></div>');
$('#my_page_id').page();
If you really want to make it all dynamically created you can check for window.location.hash and create your data-role=page div with the id set as the window.location.hash.
Also I am using Jquery 1.6 and Jquery Mobile 1.0a4.1
I hope something in there can help someone out there :)
Have you looked at jquery's ajax load method? Seems like you could just have it load the page you want and replace the body each time you have a request come back.
reference
In this example on JSFiddle, I take an API call from Flickr and run the results through the jquery tmpl engine to append the new page to the to the document and then call $.mobile.changePage() to the newly inserted page. I think you'll see how useful the pairing of jquery tmpl + apis + jquery mobile is.
http://jsfiddle.net/sgliser/8Yq36/5/
