[thelist] ajax dynamic dropdown menu set

Wed Jul 28 19:52:36 CDT 2010

Hassan Schroeder wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Bob Meetin <bobm at dottedi.biz> wrote:
>   
>> I've just started working on setting up an ajax dropdown menu set using data
>> coming from a mysql table.  I got the code off
>> http://www.plus2net.com/php_tutorial/dd3.php.  Their demo works perfectly.
>>  When you click submit the output test shows the 3 values selected for cat,
>> subcat and subcat3.
>>     
>
> Uh, well. There's no "AJAX" going on in that demo -- it's just submitting
> the values each time you change a SELECT's value. Use Firebug to
> check the network traffic.
>
>   
>> Second problem) Rather than treating it like ajax
>>     
>
> See #1  :-)
>
> I'm not familiar with mootools -- is that a requirement for your project?
> If so, I'm sure there's a library function to make AJAX requests easier
> (and unobtrusive).
>
> Also, the test page has an entire HTML document inside a table cell (!)
> which probably isn't intentional -- e.g.
>
>  <table class="contentpaneopen">
>  <tr>
>  <td valign="top">
>  <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 3.2//en">
>  <html>
>  <head>
>  <title>Demo of Three Multiple drop down list box from plus2net</title>
>
> That won't be helping any JS-related development or troubleshooting!
>
> HTH,
>   
Hassan,

Well...er... yes.  Thanks. When I googled this yesterday I grabbed the 
code from one of the promising looking results, not realizing it wasn't 
ajax.  So I went back to the drawing board, did some additional searches 
and found a couple more options.  It does not matter so much whether tis 
ajax or not, so long as it does the job. It was my mistake in not 
deleting the extra doctype stuff when I copied/pasted, but anyhow I have 
an option now that appears to work within Joomla.

http://jtest.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=93&Itemid=57

Mootools is a set of javascript library stuff that you'll commonly find 
in Joomla installs, sometimes with jQuery as well.  They seem to be 
happily coexisting.

-- 
Bob Meetin