What is pjax

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. Manual pjax invocation. Used mainly when you want to start a pjax request in a handler that didn't originate from a click.

They'll only be triggered if an actual XHR request is made, not if the content is loaded from cache:. An example of canceling a pjax:timeout event would be to disable the fallback timeout behavior if a spinner is being shown:. 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:.

By default, pjax will force a full reload of the page if it receives one of the following responses from the server:. 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. Deploying a deploy, bumping the version constant to force clients to do a full reload the next request getting the new layout and assets.

Before diving into pjax, let's have a brief look at what Ajax and pushState are. Ajax's most appealing characteristic is its "asynchronous" nature, which means it can communicate with the server, exchange data, and update the page without having to refresh the page. This is particularly useful for loading portions of a page with JavaScript, such that the content is significantly different and warrants a new URL. Here's an example. Let's say a person navigates from the homepage of a site to the Help page.

We're loading the content of that Help page with Ajax. That user then heads off to the Products page which we again load and swap out content with Ajax. Then they want to share the URL. That means, pushState does not only change the URL of the page but, behind the scenes, it also manipulates the history so as to add an element to the stack with the changed URL.

Thus, the back button will take us to the previous URL instead of the previous web page. Pjax is just the combination of these two concepts. It then updates the current URL in the browser using pushState.

This results in faster page navigation for two reasons:. Now we are ready to dive into an example of pjax. First, let's quickly install it. It does not need any kind of dependencies, you don't even need jQuery! You will have to include the pjax. I installed it through npm and will be using npm to start the server as well.

It doesn't matter what you use to start the server or what MVC framework you use, it will work for every one of them just fine. Here is the basic sequence of Pjax process. Thanks to it, visitors can go back to previous status by clicking browser back button. This is not achievable by only Ajax. This is particularly useful for loading portions of a page with JavaScript, such that the content is significantly different and warrants a new URL. The page transition using Pjax is usually faster than normal page transition because Pjax is generally used for partial page refreshment.

Since there is a ms delay during the user hover and the click, we can use this time to start prefetching the page. On the contrary, It generates more requests to your server. So please consider the traffic volume when you activate Prefetch function. See how to develop smooth transition by Barba. Most of websites there are some common elements across the entire website like Header, Sidebar and Footer.