[support] Writing ahah callbacks to a

[Pierre Rineau]

On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 14:33 -0400, Christopher M. Jones wrote:
> I have a custom cck widget. I want part of that widget to open in a 
> modal window (modalframe api), which uses an iframe. I have a function 
> that encapsulates the portion of the form array in question. There are 
> ahah elements througout the form, including in the portion that opens in 
> the modal frame.
> 
> I want the use of the frame to be optional. So, in case the user has 
> elected to use the frame, I want to render a button in the widget that 
> activates the frame, rendering the rest of the form. But I need ahah 
> actions in the frame to effect changes in the parent. So, when the ahah 
> callback returns a new element, I need that element to be passed back to 
> the parent.
> 
> I'm stuck here. I'm new to CCK widgets and new to ahah. I've read so 
> much that my head is spinning. I'd love it if someone could outline for 
> me the best method for accomplishing this.
> 
> Here's some brain vomit, for anyone who cares to read further:
> 
> Should the ahah responses be stored somewhere within the child document, 
> to be dumped into the parent when the window is closed?
> 
> I'd rather have changes to the parent be incremental, so that the parent 
> page is already updated by the time the user thinks to close the window. 
> But I'll settle for anything, at this point.
> 
> Or, since the form cache is being updated by the ahah callback, then 
> couldn't one re-render the whole form when the window is closed?
> 
> Is there a way to rebind ahah in the child window to ahah in the parent? 
> Pass contexts around?
> 
> ... and so forth ...

I did some tricky stuff, a long time ago. I did put AHAH stuff on a
whole form (or the most top level element I could put it), but instead
of puting it on a known event (such as 'click' or 'change'), I put it on
a custom event, which does not exists, such as 'my_magnificient_event'.

The good thing about this, is then, when your user closes the window,
you can trigger manually the "non existing event" using jQuery, such as
$("#myform .the_element_where_I_did_put_the_ahah_event").trigger("my_magnificient_event"); and hop, you win!

For the incremental stuff, it may be more difficult. Think about one
thing, which is quite annoying, when you open a modal, most APIs will
append the real DOM element representing the dialog at the body's
bottom, so it won't be within the form, so submitting the form won't
submit the values that are in the dialog. If you experience such
problem, you may have to implement your own modal by writing some JS (it
looks like much more complicated that it is really). Then, you can do
whatever you want even embed you form parts within the dialog without
worrying about this.

Pierre.