I was able to put together a simplified complete History.js example using three links to load fragments of content from a full page without updating the page and while updating the browser history.
Here are the relevent code snippets - a complete working example is here http://jsfiddle.net/PT7qx/show
<a href="/page-header">Page Header</a>
<a href="/login-form">Login Form</a>
<a href="/nothing">Nothing</a>
<script>
var History = window.History;
if (!History.enabled) {
return false;
}
History.Adapter.bind(window, 'statechange', function() {
var State = History.getState();
History.log(State.data, State.title, State.url);
if (State.title == 'Page Header') {
$('#content').load('/user/login/ .pageHeader > *');
}
if (State.title == 'Login Form') {
$('#content').load('/user/login/ #common-form > *');
}
if (State.title == 'Nothing') {
$('#content').empty()
}
});
$('body').on('click', 'a', function(e) {
var urlPath = $(this).attr('href');
var Title = $(this).text();
History.pushState(null, Title, urlPath);
// prevents default click action of <a ...>
return false;
});
<\script>
I would like to know if this is the correct usage. The previous version had an ability to bind to an event using the # urls. I have not seen any examples for binding events to urls with this latest version so I used the .on() click event to call History and sorted out what link was clicked in there.
I am not sure if this is the best way to accomplish this for this example.
After working on this some more, I have come up with a simple, but complete example for how to use the latest History.js. Here is working jsfiddle example that does Ajax loads of HTML fragments hosted on Github
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Simple History.js Ajax example by dansalmo</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.8.2.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://balupton.github.com/history.js/scripts/bundled/html4+html5/jquery.history.js"></script>
<style type='text/css'>
.hidden {
display: none;
visibility: hidden;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<a href="/home">Home</a>
<a href="/about">About</a>
<a href="/contact">Contact</a>
<a href="/other">Other</a>
<p>The whole page will not re-load when the content below is updated, yet the URL is clean and the back button works!<p><br />
<div id="content">
<div id="home">Home Page content</div>
</div>
<br />
<p>The content div will be updated with a selected div fragment from an HTML file hosted on github, however the broswer will see each content update request as a part of the page history so that the back button can be used.</p>
<br />
<p>Adding more menu items is as simple as adding the new links and their corresponding html fragments.<p>
<div id="hidden_content" class="hidden"></div>
</body>
<script type='text/javascript'>//<![CDATA[
$(function(){
var History = window.History;
if (History.enabled) {
State = History.getState();
// set initial state to first page that was loaded
History.pushState({urlPath: window.location.pathname}, $("title").text(), State.urlPath);
} else {
return false;
}
var loadAjaxContent = function(target, urlBase, selector) {
$(target).load(urlBase + ' ' + selector);
};
var updateContent = function(State) {
var selector = '#' + State.data.urlPath.substring(1);
if ($(selector).length) { //content is already in #hidden_content
$('#content').children().appendTo('#hidden_content');
$(selector).appendTo('#content');
} else {
$('#content').children().clone().appendTo('#hidden_content');
loadAjaxContent('#content', State.url, selector);
}
};
// Content update and back/forward button handler
History.Adapter.bind(window, 'statechange', function() {
updateContent(History.getState());
});
// navigation link handler
$('body').on('click', 'a', function(e) {
var urlPath = $(this).attr('href');
var title = $(this).text();
History.pushState({urlPath: urlPath}, title, urlPath);
return false; // prevents default click action of <a ...>
});
});//]]>
</script>
</html>