pjax = pushState + ajax
.--.
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Introduction
pjax is a jQuery plugin that uses ajax and pushState to deliver a fast browsing experience with real permalinks, page titles, and a working back button.
pjax works by grabbing html from your server via ajax and replacing the content
of a container on your page with the ajax’d html. It then updates the browser’s
current URL using pushState without reloading your page’s layout or any
resources (JS, CSS), giving the appearance of a fast, full page load. But really
it’s just ajax and pushState.
For browsers that don’t support pushState pjax fully degrades.
Overview
pjax is not fully automatic. You’ll need to setup and designate a containing element on your page that will be replaced when you navigate your site.
Consider the following page.
My Site
class="container" id="pjax-container"> Go to href="http://wincn.net/page/2">next page.
We want pjax to grab the URL /page/2
then replace #pjax-container
with
whatever it gets back. No styles or scripts will be reloaded and even the
can stay the same - we just want to change the #pjax-container
element.
We do this by telling pjax to listen on a
tags and use #pjax-container
as the target container:
$(document).pjax('a', '#pjax-container')
Now when someone in a pjax-compatible browser clicks “next page” the content of #pjax-container
will be replaced with the body of /page/2
.
Magic! Almost. You still need to configure your server to look for pjax requests and send back pjax-specific content.
The pjax ajax request sends an X-PJAX
header so in this example (and in most cases) we want to return just the content of the page without any layout for any requests with that header.
Here’s what it might look like in Rails:
def index
if request.headers['X-PJAX'] render :layout => false end end
If you’d like a more automatic solution than pjax for Rails check out Turbolinks .
Also check out RailsCasts #294: Playing with PJAX .
Installation
bower
Via Bower :
$ bower install jquery-pjax
Or, add jquery-pjax
to your app’s bower.json
.
"dependencies": { "jquery-pjax": "latest" }
standalone
pjax can be downloaded directly into your app’s public directory - just be sure you’ve loaded jQuery first.
curl -LO https://raw.github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax/master/jquery.pjax.js
WARNING Do not hotlink the raw script url. GitHub is not a CDN.
Dependencies
Requires jQuery 1.8.x or higher.
Compatibility
pjax only works with browsers that support the history.pushState
API . When the API isn’t supported pjax goes into fallback mode: $.fn.pjax
calls will be a no-op and $.pjax
will hard load the given URL.
For debugging purposes, you can intentionally disable pjax even if the browser supports pushState
. Just call $.pjax.disable()
. To see if pjax is actually supports pushState
, check $.support.pjax
.
Usage
$.fn.pjax
Let’s talk more about the most basic way to get started:
$(document).pjax('a', '#pjax-container')
This will enable pjax on all links and designate the container as #pjax-container
.
If you are migrating an existing site you probably don’t want to enable pjax everywhere just yet. Instead of using a global selector like a
try annotating pjaxable links with data-pjax
, then use 'a[data-pjax]'
as your selector.