Using AJAX in Sitecore rendering with XSLT

Question

I am new to Sitecore and .NET. I got an old existing project which is based on Sitecore 6.5 and rendered content by XSLT with .NET Framework 3.5.

Now what I need to create a page that can make an AJAX call so that the page need not to be refreshed and new content can be generated. I am quite familiar with AJAX call with PHP, yet I am quite confused on those in .NET.

I googled and found most of the tutorial are based on Razor view rendering.

Can anyone provide me a full picture that how can I do to meet my objective?

I wonder if the following steps are correct:

Create a .xslt for rendering different content based on matching the URL parameter that passed into
Create a .ashx to get the .xslt content
JavaScript AJAX call to the .ashx and convert the xml content to HTML

Any examples that I can follow?

Thanks!

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Update: I tried the above flow and can print Hello World by AJAX successfully. However, I am not sure how to get the content from XSLT in the following .ashx file with different parameter?

And are there any HttpPost/IsPostBack that can help to check if the .ashx is visited by a POST method?

You can refer [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1349118/jquery-ajax-post-results-in-500-internal-server-error) question that can help you. — Jay Tankariya, Aug 17 '16 at 09:23
Thanks Jay. I updated my question above. I can call AJAX successfully but face difficult when handling the communication between XSLT and .ashx! — HUNG, Aug 17 '16 at 10:02
I don't think I can specifically answer your question, but it may be worth looking at the documentation for the HttpContext object to help you understand how to work with a generic handler: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.httpcontext(v=vs.110).aspx — Brett, Aug 17 '16 at 11:59

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 18 '16 at 06:55

I finally solved the question with the following steps.

Create a .ashx to render the sitecore content. I have compared with .ashx, .aspx and .asmx. Seems .ashx is the best choice.

using Sitecore.Configuration;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.Fields;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;

namespace MYPROJECT.Web
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Summary description for AjaxTest
    /// </summary>
    public class AjaxTest : IHttpHandler
    {
        public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
        {
            context.Response.ContentType = "text/html";
            string ID = context.Request.QueryString["ID"];
            Database master = Factory.GetDatabase("master");
            Item source = master.GetItem("/sitecore/content/Home/MYPROJECT/gallery");
            Item[] items = source.GetChildren().ToArray();
            context.Response.Write(items[ID].Fields["image"].Value); 
        }

        public bool IsReusable
        {
            get
            {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }
}

p.s I removed some validation codes from above.

JavaScript AJAX call to the .ashx.

    $j('#ajax_test').click(function(){
        $j.ajax({
            //type: 'POST',
            url: '/AjaxTest.ashx?ID='+$j('#inputunmber').val(),  
            //dataType: 'html',
            //data: form.find(':input').serialize(),
            success: function( response ) {
                $j('.test_result').append(response);
            },
            error: function (xhr) {
                alert("Error:" + xhr.responseText);
            }
        });  
    });

Using AJAX in Sitecore rendering with XSLT

1 Answers1