Message to user while page loads

rubyonrails-talk
1

In my RoR project, I have an action that loads a ton of information than displays it to the user. When the user ask that resource, he has to wait a couple of seconds before something shows up. I'd like to give users a message while they are waiting.

I first thought that this would be easy, but I was wrong. How can I render a view before processing the action and then render another view?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Olivier Dupuis

2

In AQDWR v2 (Rails 1.2), there is this example:

<% form_remote_tag(:url => {:action => ‘iffy_function’},

:before => “Element.show(‘spinner’);”,

:success => “show_results(xhr);”,

:failure => “show_error(xhr);”,

:complete => “Element.hide(‘spinner’);”) do %>

Maybe this can get you started?

Peace,

Phillip

3

I actually thought of using Ajax, since this seems to be the most obvious choice. The page would load, then I could send a xhr to the server and update a div with my results.

The only problem is, I can't find a way to call a xhr only once when the page is loaded, without the intervention of the user. When I look at the prototype library, the periodically_call_remote method comes closest to what I want. But the only option I have is the frequency at which the request should be made. That means the request would be made multiple time...

Any idea of an ajax call I could use to do this?

Thanks again

Olivier

4

I generally do something like this by outputting some Javascript at the end of the page, like

<script type="text/javascript"> some_function_call(); </script>

Then in your js file, have some_function_call make your xhr request. The more appropriate way to do this is to use window.onload, but then you've got to figure out where to make the assignment

window.onload = some_function_call

That's why I often just put it at the end of the page. There is probably a more proper Rails/Prototype way to do it, but I haven't yet dug that deep.

Peace, Phillip