YUI Library Home

Site Search (YDN & YUIBlog):

# YUI Library Examples: Carousel Control: Using Ajax for deferred loading of items

# Carousel Control: Using Ajax for deferred loading of items

This example showcases the dynamic loading capabilities of the YUI Carousel Control. The YUI Carousel Control exposes an event called `loadItems`. This event is fired whenever the Carousel needs items to be loaded into it for display. Subscribing to this event makes it easy to dynamically load the next set of images.

View example in new window.

## Making the Carousel Widget to dynamically load images on the fly

Here we will use the YUI Carousel Control's `loadItems` event to dynamically load the images on the fly.

This example has the following dependencies:

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.6.0/build/carousel/assets/skins/sam/carousel.css"> <script src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.6.0/build/yahoo/yahoo-dom-event.js"></script> <script src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.6.0/build/element/element-beta-min.js"></script> <script src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.6.0/build/connection/connection-min.js"></script> <script src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.6.0/build/carousel/carousel-beta-min.js"></script>

Initially we use YUI Connection Manager to load the initial set of items as soon as part of the DOM is visible.

<div id="container"> <ol id="carousel"></ol> </div> <!-- The spotlight container --> <div id="spotlight"></div>

We have a few simple CSS rules to set the dimensions for the Carousel items.

.yui-carousel-element li { height: 75px; width: 75px; }

We'll use Connection Manager to load a set of items into the Carousel as early as possible.

YAHOO.util.Event.onAvailable("bd", function (args) { YAHOO.util.Connect.asyncRequest("GET", "php/getimages.php", { success: function (o) { var i, r = eval('(' + o.responseText + ')'); curpos = r.length; for (i = 0; i < curpos; i++) { items.push(r[i]); } // check if the Carousel widget is available if (typeof carousel != "undefined") { for (i = 0; i < curpos; i++) { // if so, shove the elements into it carousel.addItem(getImageTag(items[i])); } carousel.set("selectedItem", 0); items = []; } }, failure: function (o) { alert("Ajax request failed!"); } }); });

Let us invoke the Carousel's constructor. The YUI Carousel Control's constructor is passed with the total number of items so that it triggers the `loadItems` event if the items are not available.

YAHOO.util.Event.onDOMReady(function (ev) { var i; myLogReader = new YAHOO.widget.LogReader(); carousel = new YAHOO.widget.Carousel("container", { numItems: 17 }); carousel.render(); carousel.show(); if (items.length > 0) { for (i = 0; i < curpos; i++) { carousel.addItem(getImageTag(items[i])); } items = []; } });

The YUI Carousel Control exposes a `loadItems` custom event that is fired when the Carousel needs more items to be loaded. This becomes very handy for us since we can subscribe to it and add more items in to the Carousel widget when required.

In our case, the server program returns an array (JSON) of images. This is parsed in the Ajax callback and then the Carousel's `addItem()` is called for every image.

function getImageTag(img) { return "<img src=\"" + img + "\" height=\"75\" width=\"75\">"; } function getImages() { YAHOO.util.Connect.asyncRequest("GET", "php/getimages.php?pos=" + curpos, { success: function (o) { var i = curpos, j = 0, r = eval('(' + o.responseText + ')'); curpos += r.length; while (i < curpos) { if (r[j]) { carousel.addItem(getImageTag(r[j])); } else { break; } i++; j++; } }, failure: function (o) { alert("Ajax request failed!"); } }); } carousel.on("beforeScroll", function (o) { var i, j, last = o.last, num = carousel.get("numVisible"); if (!carousel.getItem(last+num)) { // more items available? getImages(); } return true; // so that the event is not aborted });

### YUI Logger Output:

Note: Logging and debugging is currently turned off for this example.

Reload with logging
and debugging enabled.

### Carousel Control Examples:

- Spotlight example
- Circular Carousel example
- Partially revealing previous and next items
- Using both images and text within an item
- Using Ajax for deferred loading of items
- Using the Carousel ARIA Plugin

### More Carousel Control Resources:

- User's Guide (external)
- API Documentation
- Cheat Sheet PDF (external)

Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy - Terms of Service - Copyright Policy - Job Openings