render_async

Speed up rendering Rails pages with this gem.

render_async renders partials to your views asynchronously. This is done through adding JavaScript code that does AJAX request to your controller which then renders your partial into a Rails view.

Workflow:

1. user visits a Rails page
2. AJAX request on the controller action
3. controller renders a partial
4. partials renders in the place where you put render_async helper

JavaScript is injected into <%= content_for :render_async %> so you choose where to put it.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'render_async'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Usage

1. Include render_async view helper somewhere in your views (e.g. app/views/comments/show.html.erb):

   <%= render_async comment_stats_path %>

2. Then create a route that will config/routes.rb:

   get :comment_stats, controller: :comments

3. Fill in the logic in your controller (e.g. app/controllers/comments_controller.rb):

   def comment_stats
     @stats = Comment.get_stats
   
     render partial: "comment_stats"
   end

4. Create a partial that will render (e.g. app/views/comments/_comment_stats.html.erb):

   <div class="col-md-6">
     <%= @stats %>
   </div>

5. Add content_for in your base view file in the body part (e.g. app/views/layouts/application.html.erb):

   <%= content_for :render_async %>

Advanced usage

Advanced usage includes information on different options, such as:

• Passing in a container ID
• Passing in a container class name
• Passing in HTML options
• Passing in an HTML element name
• Passing in a placeholder
• Passing in an event name
• Using default events
• Retry on failure
• Toggle event
• Polling
• Handling errors
• Caching
• Doing non-GET requests
• Using with Turbolinks
• Using with respond_to and JS format
• Nested Async Renders
• Configuration

Passing in a container ID

render_async renders an element that gets replaced with the content of your request response. In order to have more control over the element that renders first (before the request), you can set the ID of that element.

To set ID of the container element, you can do the following:

<%= render_async users_path, container_id: 'users-container' %>

Rendered code in the view:

<div id="users-container">
</div>

...

Passing in a container class name

render_async renders an element that gets replaced with the content of your request response. If you want to style that element, you can set the class name on it.

<%= render_async users_path, container_class: 'users-container-class' %>

Rendered code in the view:

<div id="render_async_18b8a6cd161499117471" class="users-container-class">
</div>

...

Passing in HTML options

render_async can accept html_options as a hash. html_options is an optional hash that gets passed to a Rails' javascript_tag, to drop HTML tags into the script element.

Example of utilizing html_options with a nonce:

<%= render_async users_path, html_options: { nonce: true } %>

Rendered code in the view:

<script nonce="2x012CYGxKgM8qAApxRHxA==">
//<![CDATA[
  ...
//]]>
</script>

...

<div id="render_async_18b8a6cd161499117471" class="">
</div>

Passing in an HTML element name

render_async can take in an HTML element name, allowing you to control what type of container gets rendered. This can be useful when you're using render_async inside a table and you need it to render a tr element before your request gets loaded, so your content doesn't get pushed out of the table.

Example of using HTML element name:

<%= render_async users_path, html_element_name: 'tr' %>

Rendered code in the view:

<tr id="render_async_04229e7abe1507987376">
</tr>
...

Passing in a placeholder

render_async can be called with a block that will act as a placeholder before your AJAX call finishes.

Example of passing in a block:

<%= render_async users_path do %>
  <h1>Users are loading...</h1>
<% end %>

Rendered code in the view:

<div id="render_async_14d7ac165d1505993721">
  <h1>Users are loading...</h1>
</div>

<script>
//<![CDATA[
  ...
//]]>
</script>

After AJAX is finished, placeholder will be replaced with the request's response.

Passing in an event name

render_async can receive :event_name option which will emit JavaScript event after it's done with fetching and rendering request content to HTML.

This can be useful to have if you want to add some JavaScript functionality after your partial is loaded through render_async.

You can also access the associated container (DOM node) in the event object that gets emitted.

Example of passing it to render_async:

<%= render_async users_path, event_name: "users-loaded" %>

Rendered code in view:

<div id="render_async_04229e7abe1507987376">
</div>

<script>
//<![CDATA[
  ...
    document.dispatchEvent(new Event("users-loaded"));
  ...
//]]>
</script>

Then, in your JavaScript code, you could do something like this:

document.addEventListener("users-loaded", function(event) {
  console.log("Users have loaded!", event.container); // Access the container which loaded the users
});

NOTE: Dispatching events is also supported for older browsers that don't support Event constructor.

Using default events

render_async will fire the event render_async_load when an async partial has loaded and rendered on page.

In case there is an error, the event render_async_error will fire instead.

This event will fire for all render_async partials on the page. For every event, the associated container (DOM node) will be passed along.

This can be useful to apply JavaScript to content loaded after the page is ready.

Example of using events:

// Vanilla javascript
document.addEventListener('render_async_load', function(event) {
  console.log('Async partial loaded in this container:', event.container);
});
document.addEventListener('render_async_error', function(event) {
  console.log('Async partial could not load in this container:', event.container);
});

// with jQuery
$(document).on('render_async_load', function(event) {
  console.log('Async partial loaded in this container:', event.container);
});
$(document).on('render_async_error', function(event) {
  console.log('Async partial could not load in this container:', event.container);
});

Retry on failure

render_async can retry your requests if they fail for some reason.

If you want render_async to retry a request for number of times, you can do this:

<%= render_async users_path, retry_count: 5, error_message: "Couldn't fetch it" %>

Now render_async will retry users_path for 5 times. If it succeeds in between, it will stop with dispatching requests. If it fails after 5 times, it will show an error message which you need to specify.

This can show useful when you know your requests often fail, and you don't want to refresh the whole page just to retry them.

Toggle event

You can trigger render_async loading by clicking or doing another event to a certain HTML element. You can do this by passing in a selector and an event name which will trigger render_async. If you don't specify an event name, the default event that will trigger render_async will be 'click' event. You can do this by doing the following:

<a href='#' id='detail-button'>Detail</a>
<%= render_async comments_path, toggle: { selector: '#detail-button', event: :click } %>

This will trigger render_async to load the comments_path when you click the #details-button element. If you want to remove event once it's triggered, you can pass once: true in the toggle options. The once option is false by default.

You can also pass in a placeholder before the render_async is triggered. That way, the element that started render_async logic will be removed after the request has been completed. You can achieve this behaviour with something like this:

<%= render_async comments_path, toggle: { selector: '#detail-button', event: :click } do %>
  <a href='#' id='detail-button'>Detail</a>
<% end %>

Also, you can mix interval and toggle features. This way, you can turn polling on, and off by clicking the "Detail" button. In order to do this, you need to pass toggle and interval arguments to render_async call like this:

<a href='#' id='detail-button'>Detail</a>
<%= render_async comments_path, toggle: { selector: '#detail-button', event: :click }, interval: 2000 %>

Polling

You can call render_async with interval argument. This will make render_async call specified path at specified interval.

By doing this:

<%= render_async comments_path, interval: 5000 %>

You are telling render_async to fetch comments_path every 5 seconds.

This can be handy if you want to enable polling for a specific URL.

NOTE: By passing interval to render_async, initial container element will remain in HTML tree, it will not be replaced with request response. You can handle how that container element is rendered and its style by passing in an HTML element name and HTML element class.

Handling errors

render_async let's you handle errors by allowing you to pass in error_message and error_event_name.

• error_message

  passing an error_message will render a message if the AJAX requests fails for some reason

  <%= render_async users_path,
                   error_message: '<p>Sorry, users loading went wrong :(</p>' %>

• error_event_name

  calling render_async with error_event_name will dispatch event in the case of an error with your AJAX call.

  <%= render_asyc users_path, error_event_name: 'users-error-event' %>

  You can then catch the event in your code with:

  document.addEventListener('users-error-event', function() {
    // I'm on it
  })

Caching

render_async can utilize view fragment caching to avoid extra AJAX calls.

In your views (e.g. app/views/comments/show.html.erb):

# note 'render_async_cache' instead of standard 'render_async'
<%= render_async_cache comment_stats_path %>

Then, in the partial (e.g. app/views/comments/_comment_stats.html.erb):

<% cache render_async_cache_key(request.path), skip_digest: true do %>
  <div class="col-md-6">
    <%= @stats %>
  </div>
<% end %>

• The first time the page renders, it will make the AJAX call.
• Any other times (until the cache expires), it will render from cache instantly, without making the AJAX call.
• You can expire cache simply by passing :expires_in in your view where you cache the partial

Doing non-GET requests

By default, render_async creates AJAX GET requests for the path you provide. If you want to change this behaviour, you can pass in a method argument to render_async view helper.

<%= render_async users_path, method: 'POST' %>

You can also set body and headers of the request if you need them.

<%= render_async users_path,
                 method: 'POST',
                 data: { fresh: 'AF' },
                 headers: { 'Content-Type': 'text' } %>

Using with Turbolinks

On Turbolinks applications, you may experience caching issues when navigating away from, and then back to, a page with a render_async call on it. This will likely show up as an empty div.

If you're using Turbolinks 5 or higher, you can resolve this by setting Turbolinks configuration of render_async to true:

RenderAsync.configure do |config|
  config.turbolinks = true # Enable this option if you are using Turbolinks 5+
end

This way, you're not breaking Turbolinks flow of loading or reloading a page. It makes it more efficient that the next option that is suggested below.

Another option: If you want, you can tell Turbolinks to reload your render_async call as follows:

<%= render_async events_path, 'data-turbolinks-track': 'reload' %>

This will reload the whole page with Turbolinks.

Make sure to put <%= content_for :render_async %> in your base view file in the <head> and not the <body>.

Using with respond_to and JS format

If you need to restrict the action to only respond to AJAX requests, you'll likely wrap it inside respond_to/format.js blocks like this:

def comment_stats
  respond_to do |format|
    format.js do
      @stats = Comment.get_stats

      render partial: "comment_stats"
    end
  end
end

When you do this, Rails will sometime set the response's Content-Type header to text/javascript. This causes the partial not to be rendered in the HTML. This usually happens when there's browser caching.

You can get around it by specifying the content type to text/html in the render call:

render partial: "comment_stats", content_type: 'text/html'

Nested Async Renders

It is possible to nest async templates within other async templates. When doing so, another content_for is required to ensure the JavaScript needed to load nested templates is included.

For example:

<%# app/views/comments/show.html.erb %>

<%= render_async comment_stats_path %>

<%# app/views/comments/_comment_stats.html.erb %>

<div class="col-md-6">
  <%= @stats %>
</div>

<div class="col-md-6">
  <%= render_async comment_advanced_stats_path %>
</div>

<%= content_for :render_async %>

Configuration

render_async renders Vanilla JS (regular JavaScript, non-jQuery code) by default in order to fetch the request from the server.

If you want render_async to use jQuery code, you need to configure it to do so.

You can configure it by doing the following anywhere before you call render_async:

RenderAsync.configure do |config|
  config.jquery = true # This will render jQuery code, and skip Vanilla JS code
  config.turbolinks = false # Enable this option if you are using Turbolinks 5+
end

Also, you can do it like this:

# This will render jQuery code, and skip Vanilla JS code
RenderAsync.configuration.jquery = true

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/renderedtext/render_async.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Contributors

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

Nikola Đuza 💬 💻 📖 👀	Colin 💻 📖 💡	Kasper Grubbe 💻	Sai Ram Kunala 📖	Josh Arnold 💻 📖	Elad Shahar 💻 💡	Sasha 💻 📖
Ernest Surudo 💻	Kurtis Rainbolt-Greene 💻	Richard Schneeman 📖	Richard Venneman 📖	Filipe W. Lima 📖	Jesús Eduardo Clemens Chong 💻	René Klačan 💻
Gil Gomes 📖	Khoa Nguyen 💻 📖	Preet Sethi 💻	fangxing 💻	Emmanuel Pire 💻 📖	Maxim Geerinck 💻

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!