Pjax and Laravel routes

Question

Currently integrating jquery pjax, will do my best to explain. I have it working inside the first view however when accessing the URL address directly from address bar I get the view without the @extends('layout.main').

Here is my setup:

Routes, one route is for the retailers.index view and the other is for my GET parameter and retailers.stores view.

Route::get('retailers', array(
    'as' => 'retailers', 
    'uses' => 'SiteController@retailers'));

Route::get('retailers/{city}', array(
    'as' => 'find-retailers',
    'uses' => 'SiteController@getRetailers'));

Controllers:

public function retailers() {

$listings = DB::table('retailers_listings')
->orderBy('counter', 'desc')
->groupBy('country')
->get();

return View::make('retailers.index')
->with('retailers_listings', $listings)
}

public function getRetailers($city) {    

$locations = DB::table('retailers_listings')
->orderBy('country', 'asc')
->Where('city', $city)
->get();

return View::make('retailers.stores')
->with('retailers_listings', $locations);
}

href with pjax and URL route to retailers.stores view - using find-retailers

<a data-pjax href="{{ URL::route('find-retailers', array('city' => $string)) }}">
{{ $string }}
</a>

Inline JS

$(document).pjax('[data-pjax] a, a[data-pjax]', '#pjax-container')

If I am loading /retailers (index) everything works and if I press the link it will load store.retailers view inside the <div id="pjax-container"></div> and the URL will change to retailers/{country}. If I load from the URL address bar directly it will only load the view without @extends('layout.main'), as I do not call that in my retailers.stores view because I load retailers.stores in pjax.

Basically it works, but not when loading directly for address bar.

Answer 1

Laravel has no idea you're using something like PJAX.

You should include @extends('layout.main') in each route. In order to work with PJAX, you should make layout.main only spit out the site layout if Request::ajax() is false.

Answer 2

You should NOT use @if(!Request::ajax()) to determine if the request is by PJAX.

PJAX will provide specific custom headers (HTTP_X_PJAX and HTTP_X_PJAX_CONTAINER) that you should be using to determine what the request is asking for.

@if($request->server->get('HTTP_X_PJAX'))

---

For a simpler solution...

You should take a look at this laravel package for working with PJAX:

https://github.com/simonstamm/laravel-pjax

It uses the headers mentioned above properly and will even automatically send back the appropriate part of a view for a request.