Bambu AJAX

AJAX utility functions for Django that can be accessed via a single URL (ala WordPress admin-ajax.php)

About Bambu AJAX

Bambu AJAX lets you write utility functions for your Django apps that can be called via AJAX, without having to specify a separate URL pattern and view for each one.

Installation

Install the package via Pip:

pip install bambu-ajax

Add it to your INSTALLED_APPS list:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'bambu.ajax'
)

Add bambu.ajax.urls to your URLconf:

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ...
    url(r'^ajax/', include('bambu.ajax.urls')),
)

Basic usage

Create a file called ajax.php within your Django app, and import the necessary module from the bambu-ajax package, like so:

from bambu.ajax import site

@site.register
def my_ajax_function(request):
    return [
        'a', 'list', 'of', 'things'
    ]

Using the site.register decorator registers your AJAX function with the bambu.ajax view.

To leverage this function from within a Django template, use the ajaxurl template tag, like so:

{% load ajax %}
<script>
    $.getJSON('{% ajaxurl 'my_project.my_app.my_ajax_function' %}&callback=?',
        function(data) {
            console.log(data);
        }
    );
</script>

Here, my_project should refer to the name of your Django project, my_app should be the name of the app you put your ajax.py file in, and my_ajax_function is the name of the function you defined within ajax.py.

The notation is similar to that used when referring to Django models, in that you always skip the common portion ajax from the naming convention.

Shortcut

Make your life easier by including the utility library in your template:

<script src="{% url ajax_utility %}"></script>
<script>
    bambu.ajax.get('poddle.podcasting.my_ajax_function',
        function(data) {
            console.log(data);
        }
    );
</script>

This achieves the same result, but in a much cleaner way.

Dynamically updating page content

As well as returning JSON-serialisable data per the examples above, you can also use AJAX functions just like views, in that they can return an HttpResponse object.

Using that method, the example above would print out the HTML (or other data) returned in the HTTP response.

Additional decorators

You can of course add other decorators, just as you would with normal views.

Todo

• Add a dedicated login_required decorator that returns a more helpful response for anonymous users
• Look into integrating this with Plunja, my dynamic JavaScript templating library.

Questions or suggestions?

Find me on Twitter (@iamsteadman) or visit my blog.