Question

I’m wanting to know what the best way to go about creating a list of say, users’s statuses (similar to what facebook/twitter has) that is loaded in with PHP when the page loads. But ajax checks for new status updates every 10 seconds or so.

It looks like to me that there are about 2 options: Put the “new items” html in the PHP file that gets called by ajax, and append it to the element containing the status feed. (this also defeats the purpose of JSON)

or

use something like jTemplates. but as far as i can see this option would not be ideal because when the page first loads it has to do an ajax post/get request.

How does everyone else do theirs? I want to do things the best, most ‘pro’ way!

Answer 1

I’d use something like this:

$(function() {
    var updateStatus = function() {
        var options = {
            url: "some/address/that/returns/JSON",
            dataType: "json",
            success: function(data, textStatus) {
                // use JSON to update you're markup...
                setTimeout(updateStatus, 10);
            }
        };
        $.ajax(options);
    };
    setTimeout(updateStatus, 10);
});