Rails spinoffs - Oct 2005 - storing state in cookies using scriptaculous

Hi All,

So I''m using scriptaculous in rails to allow opening and closing of
messages in a threaded forum without the need for reloading the entire page.

What I was wondering was if there was some way to store the state (which
messages are open and which are closed) in a cookie or something, so
that when the user does reload the page the messages won''t all be reset
to their initial closed state.

I know it can be done in principal, but I was wondering if there was a
clean or recommended way to achieve this in scriptacukous.

Of course one approach is to store all the open/close state data in the
db, but that''s specific to each user, and seems like a lot of work, and
not necessarily something that we want to persist beyond an individual
session.

Many thanks in advance.

CHEERS> SAM

* Sam Joseph <gaijin@yha.att.ne.jp> [2005-10-01
00:40]:
> Hi All,
> 
> So I''m using scriptaculous in rails to allow opening and closing
of
> messages in a threaded forum without the need for reloading the entire
page.
> 
> What I was wondering was if there was some way to store the state (which
> messages are open and which are closed) in a cookie or something, so
> that when the user does reload the page the messages won''t all be
reset
> to their initial closed state.
> 
> I know it can be done in principal, but I was wondering if there was a
> clean or recommended way to achieve this in scriptacukous.
> Of course one approach is to store all the open/close state data in the
> db, but that''s specific to each user, and seems like a lot of
work, and
> not necessarily something that we want to persist beyond an individual
> session.
> Many thanks in advance.
    http://www.webreference.com/javascript/961125/index.html

    If you can flatten your cookie into name value pairs, then I''d
    store it as a url encoded string. I''d set the path to point to
    the path of the forums, to keep the other sections of your site
    free of unwanted cookies. If here are multiple forums...

    http://acme.com/forums/rockets.html
    http://acme.com/forums/anvils.html

    I''d name the cookie anvils or rockets, so you''d have just
the
    forum information you need (rather than trying to build a tree
    within the cookie).

    Cookies have some fixed on some browsers.

    Cheers.

--
Alan Gutierrez - alan@engrm.com - http://engrm.com/blogometer/

Hi Alan,

Thanks for all the tips - very helpful.

However none of this is specific to scriptaculous right?  You''re 
suggesting I write my own javascript to manipulate the cookies - which 
implies there is no cookie manipulation as part of scriptaculous and 
prototype?

I checked out the prototype documentation 
http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/show/Prototype and couldn''t 
see any mention of cookies, and scriptaculous reference documentation 
appears to be a todo, so I guess rolling my own is the only way to go 
here ...

CHEERS> SAM

Alan Gutierrez wrote:
>* Sam Joseph <gaijin@yha.att.ne.jp> [2005-10-01 00:40]:
>  
>
>>Hi All,
>>
>>So I''m using scriptaculous in rails to allow opening and
closing of
>>messages in a threaded forum without the need for reloading the entire
page.
>>
>>What I was wondering was if there was some way to store the state (which
>>messages are open and which are closed) in a cookie or something, so
>>that when the user does reload the page the messages won''t all
be reset
>>to their initial closed state.
>>
>    http://www.webreference.com/javascript/961125/index.html
>
>    If you can flatten your cookie into name value pairs, then I''d
>    store it as a url encoded string. I''d set the path to point to
>    the path of the forums, to keep the other sections of your site
>    free of unwanted cookies. If here are multiple forums...
>
>    http://acme.com/forums/rockets.html
>    http://acme.com/forums/anvils.html
>
>    I''d name the cookie anvils or rockets, so you''d have
just the
>    forum information you need (rather than trying to build a tree
>    within the cookie).
>
>    Cookies have some fixed on some browsers.
>
>    Cheers.
>
>--
>Alan Gutierrez - alan@engrm.com - http://engrm.com/blogometer/
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>Rails-spinoffs mailing list
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>
>
>  
>

* Sam Joseph <gaijin@yha.att.ne.jp> [2005-10-04
01:48]:
> Hi Alan,
> 
> Thanks for all the tips - very helpful.
> 
> However none of this is specific to scriptaculous right?  You''re 
> suggesting I write my own javascript to manipulate the cookies - which 
> implies there is no cookie manipulation as part of scriptaculous and 
> prototype?
> 
> I checked out the prototype documentation 
> http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/show/Prototype and
couldn''t
> see any mention of cookies, and scriptaculous reference documentation 
> appears to be a todo, so I guess rolling my own is the only way to go 
> here ...
    I wouldn''t look at it that way. The cigarettes are there. They
    are just in a different carton.
    
    Cookies in JavaScript are well defined, the work the same on all
    browsers, they are very old part of the environment.

    I don''t see how creating a wrapper class helps much, but maybe
    it''s a matter of familiarity, documentation.

    I''d be concerned about bloat.

--
Alan Gutierrez - alan@engrm.com - http://engrm.com/blogometer/