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 fetching HTML from your server via ajax and replacing the content of a container element on your page with the loaded HTML. It then updates the current URL in the browser using pushState. This results in faster page navigation for two reasons:
jquery-pjax is largely unmaintained at this point. It might continue to receive important bug fixes, but its feature set is frozen and it's unlikely that it will get new features or enhancements.
pjax depends on jQuery 1.8 or higher.
There's no need to install library manually since it comes pre-installed with Yii 2.0.
$ bower install yii2-pjax
Or, add yii2-pjax
to your app's bower.json
.
"dependencies": { "yii2-pjax": "latest" }
pjax can be downloaded directly into your app's public directory - just be sure you've loaded jQuery first. Download and include jquery.pjax.js
in your web page:
curl -LO https://raw.github.com/yiisoft/jquery-pjax/master/jquery.pjax.js
The simplest and most common use of pjax looks like this:
$(document).pjax('a', '#pjax-container')
This will enable pjax on all links on the page 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. Or, try this selector that matches any <a data-pjax href=>
links inside a <div data-pjax>
container:
$(document).pjax('[data-pjax] a, a[data-pjax]', '#pjax-container')Server-side configuration
Ideally, your server should detect pjax requests by looking at the special X-PJAX
HTTP header, and render only the HTML meant to replace the contents of the container element (#pjax-container
in our example) without the rest of the page layout. Here is an example of how this might be done in Ruby on 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.
Check if there is a pjax plugin for your favorite server framework.
Also check out RailsCasts #294: Playing with PJAX.
The synopsis for the $.fn.pjax
function is:
$(document).pjax(selector, [container], options)
selector
is a string to be used for click event delegation.container
is a string selector that uniquely identifies the pjax container.options
is an object with keys described below.timeout
650 ajax timeout in milliseconds after which a full refresh is forced push
true use pushState to add a browser history entry upon navigation replace
false replace URL without adding browser history entry maxCacheLength
20 maximum cache size for previous container contents version
a string or function returning the current pjax version scrollTo
0 vertical position to scroll to after navigation. To avoid changing scroll position, pass false
. If set to true
page will scroll to the pjax container. Can also be be a callback function with context and current hash passed in as parameters. E.g. function (context, hash) { if (!hash) return $(context).offset().top; }
scrollOffset
0 vertical offset that gets added to scrollTo
. Can be a callback function with the current scrollTo
value passed as a parameter. type
"GET"
see $.ajax dataType
"html"
see $.ajax container
CSS selector for the element where content should be replaced url
link.href a string or function that returns the URL for the ajax request target
link eventually the relatedTarget
value for pjax events fragment
CSS selector for the fragment to extract from ajax response pushRedirect
false whether to add a browser history entry upon redirect replaceRedirect
true whether to replace URL without adding a browser history entry upon redirect skipOuterContainers
false When pjax containers are nested and this option is true, the closest pjax block will handle the event. Otherwise, the top container will handle the event ieRedirectCompatibility
true Whether to add X-Ie-Redirect-Compatibility
header for the request on IE. Fixes IE error on 302 redirect without Location
header
You can change the defaults globally by writing to the $.pjax.defaults
object:
$.pjax.defaults.timeout = 1200
This is a lower level function used by $.fn.pjax
itself. It allows you to get a little more control over the pjax event handling.
This example uses the current click context to set an ancestor element as the container:
if ($.support.pjax) { $(document).on('click', 'a[data-pjax]', function(event) { var container = $(this).closest('[data-pjax-container]') var containerSelector = '#' + container.id $.pjax.click(event, {container: containerSelector}) }) }
NOTE Use the explicit $.support.pjax
guard. We aren't using $.fn.pjax
so we should avoid binding this event handler unless the browser is actually going to use pjax.
Submits a form via pjax.
$(document).on('submit', 'form[data-pjax]', function(event) { $.pjax.submit(event, '#pjax-container') })
Initiates a request for the current URL to the server using pjax mechanism and replaces the container with the response. Does not add a browser history entry.
$.pjax.reload('#pjax-container', options)
Manual pjax invocation. Used mainly when you want to start a pjax request in a handler that didn't originate from a click. If you can get access to a click event
, consider $.pjax.click(event)
instead.
function applyFilters() { var url = urlForFilters() $.pjax({url: url, container: '#pjax-container'}) }
All pjax events except pjax:click
& pjax:clicked
are fired from the pjax container element.
pjax:click
✔︎ options
fires from a link that got activated; cancel to prevent pjax pjax:beforeSend
✔︎ xhr, options
can set XHR headers pjax:start
xhr, options
pjax:send
xhr, options
pjax:clicked
options
fires after pjax has started from a link that got clicked pjax:beforeReplace
contents, options
before replacing HTML with content loaded from the server pjax:success
data, status, xhr, options
after replacing HTML content loaded from the server pjax:timeout
✔︎ xhr, options
fires after options.timeout
; will hard refresh unless canceled pjax:error
✔︎ xhr, textStatus, error, options
on ajax error; will hard refresh unless canceled pjax:complete
xhr, textStatus, options
always fires after ajax, regardless of result pjax:end
xhr, options
event lifecycle on browser Back/Forward navigation pjax:popstate
event direction
property: "back"/"forward" pjax:start
null, options
before replacing content pjax:beforeReplace
contents, options
right before replacing HTML with content from cache pjax:end
null, options
after replacing content
pjax:send
& pjax:complete
are a good pair of events to use if you are implementing a loading indicator. They'll only be triggered if an actual XHR request is made, not if the content is loaded from cache:
$(document).on('pjax:send', function() { $('#loading').show() }) $(document).on('pjax:complete', function() { $('#loading').hide() })
An example of canceling a pjax:timeout
event would be to disable the fallback timeout behavior if a spinner is being shown:
$(document).on('pjax:timeout', function(event) { // Prevent default timeout redirection behavior event.preventDefault() })Reinitializing plugins/widget on new page content
The whole point of pjax is that it fetches and inserts new content without refreshing the page. However, other jQuery plugins or libraries that are set to react on page loaded event (such as DOMContentLoaded
) will not pick up on these changes. Therefore, it's usually a good idea to configure these plugins to reinitialize in the scope of the updated page content. This can be done like so:
$(document).on('ready pjax:end', function(event) { $(event.target).initializeMyPlugin() })
This will make $.fn.initializeMyPlugin()
be called at the document level on normal page load, and on the container level after any pjax navigation (either after clicking on a link or going Back in the browser).
By default, pjax will force a full reload of the page if it receives one of the following responses from the server:
Page content that includes <html>
when fragment
selector wasn't explicitly configured. Pjax presumes that the server's response hasn't been properly configured for pjax. If fragment
pjax option is given, pjax will extract the content based on that selector.
Page content that is blank. Pjax assumes that the server is unable to deliver proper pjax contents.
HTTP response code that is 4xx or 5xx, indicating some server error.
If the server needs to affect the URL which will appear in the browser URL after pjax navigation (like HTTP redirects work for normal requests), it can set the X-PJAX-URL
header:
def index request.headers['X-PJAX-URL'] = "http://example.com/hello" end
Layouts can be forced to do a hard reload when assets or html changes.
First set the initial layout version in your header with a custom meta tag.
<meta http-equiv="x-pjax-version" content="v123">
Then from the server side, set the X-PJAX-Version
header to the same.
if request.headers['X-PJAX'] response.headers['X-PJAX-Version'] = "v123" end
Deploying a deploy, bumping the version constant to force clients to do a full reload the next request getting the new layout and assets.
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