Dynamically create jQuery Mobile page via JavaScript after clicking

Witek picture Witek · May 18, 2011 · Viewed 33.7k times · Source

My jQuery Mobile app consists of a single index.html page and contains only one page with a link on startup:

<div data-role="page">
  <div data-role="content">
    <a id="startPageLink" href="startPage">start</a>
  </div>
</div>

When the user clicks on the start link, I want to load the content for the startPage from my JSON api asynchronously. On the callback I would like to create all the required DOM elements for startPage via JavaScript and add the content to it. I have created a createStartPage(data) method for this.

What is the right way to implement such dynamically created pages, so that opening index.html#startPage also works? I think there should be a way to hook into $.mobile.changePage() to include custom loading/page-creation code, but I did not find anything. Or is there a better solution for this problem?

Answer

Jasper picture Jasper · Jun 10, 2011

I had some time to mess around with this and I've found a solution that works (tested).

SOME NOTES:

  1. the javascript encapsulated in $(document).ready(); is for dynamically creating a page if the user navigates to your index.html file with a hash mark already appended (i.e. index.html#some_hash_mark).
  2. The function, create_page(page_id) is for creating a page from a link (or programatically if you like).
  3. Note that the jquery core script and the jquery mobile css are loaded before the $(document).ready() statement but that the jquery mobile script is loaded after.
  4. See that the body tag has been given an id that is refrenced when appending pages to it.

Document Sample

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0a4.1/jquery.mobile-1.0a4.1.min.css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function() {

    //check if hash exists and that it is not for the home screen
    if (window.location.hash != '' && window.location.hash != '#page_0') {

        //set whatever content you want to put into the new page
        var content_string = 'Some ' + window.location.hash + ' text...<br><br><a href="#page_0">go to home screen</a>';

        //append the new page onto the end of the body
        $('#page_body').append('<div data-role="page" id="' + window.location.hash.replace('#','') + '"><div data-role="content">' + content_string + '</div></div>');

        //add a link on the home screen to navaigate to the new page (just so nav isn't broken if user goes from new page to home screen)
        $('#page_0 div[data-role="content"]').append('<br><br><a href="#' + window.location.hash.replace('#','') + '">go to ' + window.location.hash.replace('#','') + ' page</a>');
    }
});
function create_page(page_id) {

    //set whatever content you want to put into the new page
    var string = 'FOO BAR page...<br><br><a href="#page_0">return to home screen</a>';

    //append the new page onto the end of the body
    $('#page_body').append('<div data-role="page" id="' + page_id + '"><div data-role="content">' + string + '</div></div>');

    //initialize the new page 
    $.mobile.initializePage();

    //navigate to the new page
    $.mobile.changePage("#" + page_id, "pop", false, true);

    //add a link on the home screen to navaigate to the new page (just so nav isn't broken if user goes from new page to home screen)
    $('#page_0 div[data-role="content"]').append('<br><br><a href="#' + page_id + '">go to ' + page_id + ' page</a>');

    //refresh the home screen so new link is given proper css
    $('#page_0 div[data-role="content"]').page();
}
</script>
<title>Fixed Headers Example</title>
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0a4.1/jquery.mobile-1.0a4.1.min.js"></script>

</head>

<body id="page_body">
<div data-role="page" id="page_0">
<div data-role="content">Some #page_0 text...<br><br><a href="javascript: create_page('foo_bar_page');">create new page</a></div>
</div>


</body>
</html>