Drupro Rapid Drupal Development

In Finnish Drupalcamp 2010, I gave a session about the CTool's AJAX Framework. The slides and a couple of demo modules are attached, and I explain more details in a short article, since the slides are summarized.

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript & XML) is nothing new nowadays. Several Javascript frameworks like jQuery have made it easier to make AJAX calls. You don't have to worry about handling the low level XMLHttpRequest object (XHR) anymore.

Drupal and AJAX

Drupal and AJAX jQuery got into Drupal 6 core in 2007, so you can use its AJAX API. But still, you have to make some repetitive stuff like taking care of errors, provide an accessible alternative for browsers without Javascript enabled, tell the user that the AJAX request is processing, etc. Here enters CTools.

In 2008 Earl Miles, author of Views and Panels, introduced the CTools module. This contrib module consists of a set of developers’ tools and APIs that you can use in your own modules. One of these tools is an AJAX Framework that recently got into Drupal 7 core and provides some basic AJAX functionality to your modules without writing a single line of Javascript.

It's as easy as writing into your module an AJAX commands in PHP. CTools will take care of communicating to the browser what needs to be done (inserting that content, replacing it, changing CSS, etc). The default commands should cover the basic needs, but if you need some extra functionality, you can create your own commands. In the demo attached, I created an example of a new command "drupro_demo2_effect_command" that will take 2 extra arguments, 'effect' and 'speed' to make insertions.

Benefits

Summarizing, the main benefits of using the CTools approach instead of writing your own jQuery's AJAX code are:

• It's part of Drupal 7 core, so expect higher security, support and documentation. That presumably will be back ported to CTools for Drupal 6.
• Less code to write and maintain.
• The AJAX framework takes care of:
• Informing user that AJAX call is being requested (throbber icon).
• Attaching/detaching Drupal.behaviors.
• Errors handling.
• And it provides an easy and standard way to implement graceful degradation based on URL parameters.
• Basic commands are provided and they are are extensible.

Main drawback of this approach is the lack of control on the Javascript side and the AJAX call itself, but definitely is the way to go if you need something fast and simple.