Animated AJAX Record Deletion Using Dojo

By  on  

I'm a huge fan of WordPress' method of individual article deletion. You click the delete link, the menu item animates red, and the item disappears. Here's how to achieve that functionality with Dojo JavaScript.

The PHP - Content & Header

The following snippet goes at the top of the page:

if(isset($_GET['delete'])) {
	$query = 'DELETE FROM my_table WHERE item_id = '.(int)$_GET['delete'];
	$result = mysql_query($query,$link);
}

The following is used to display the records:

$query = 'SELECT * FROM my_table ORDER BY title ASC';
$result = mysql_query($query,$link);
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
	echo '<div class="record" id="record-',$row['item_id'],'">
				<a href="?delete=',$row['item_id'],'" class="delete">Delete</a>
				<strong>',$row['title'],'</strong>
			</div>';
}

The Dojo Toolkit JavaScript

dojo.addOnLoad(function() {
	dojo.query('a.delete').connect('onclick',function(e) {
		var a = this;
		dojo.anim(a.parentNode,{
			backgroundColor: '#fb6c6c'
		},300);
		dojo.stopEvent(e);
		dojo.xhr('get',{
			content: {
				ajax: 1
			},
			url: dojo.attr(a,'href'),
			load: function() {
				dojo.anim(a.parentNode,{
					opacity: 0
				},300,null,function() {
					dojo.query(a.parentNode).orphan();
				});
			}
		});
	});
});

For every link, we add a click event that triggers the AJAX request. During the request, we transition the containing element to a red background. When the AJAX request returns a "success" response, we slide the element off of the screen.

How would you use this? Share!

Recent Features

  • By
    7 Essential JavaScript Functions

    I remember the early days of JavaScript where you needed a simple function for just about everything because the browser vendors implemented features differently, and not just edge features, basic features, like addEventListener and attachEvent.  Times have changed but there are still a few functions each developer should...

  • By
    Camera and Video Control with HTML5

    Client-side APIs on mobile and desktop devices are quickly providing the same APIs.  Of course our mobile devices got access to some of these APIs first, but those APIs are slowly making their way to the desktop.  One of those APIs is the getUserMedia API...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS 3D Folding Animation

    Google Plus provides loads of inspiration for front-end developers, especially when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript wonders they create. Last year I duplicated their incredible PhotoStack effect with both MooTools and pure CSS; this time I'm going to duplicate...

  • By
    Comment Preview Using MooTools

    Comment previewing is an awesome addition to any blog. I've seen really simple comment previewing and some really complex comment previewing. The following is a tutorial on creating very basic comment previewing using MooTools. The XHTML You can set up your XHTML any way you'd like.

Discussion

  1. So, you’re learning Dojo now? I would like to see more! First comment (I think)!

  2. MP

    Hi man, great work as always!

    what does the $link variable does in the two sql-commands? I can’t get this or the Jquery-example too work, but if I remove the $link when I get the data from table I got result.

  3. @MP: The $link variable is the connection returned from the mysql_connect() function within PHP. It’s not a required argument.

  4. Ludovic

    Hi, This works very well, he’s the same script to add a record?

  5. Jason

    Nice. Do you have a jquery demo version?

  6. Jason

    nevermind. I found it.

  7. AnthonK

    But,how about to give an “alert-message” to warn some deleted records? Which part of code i should add? Thanks.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!