Browser/server interaction

There are multiple ways to set up interaction between server-side Zotonic code and client-side JavaScript.

If you want to initiate the interaction in the client (browser)

  1. wired events
  2. notifications
  3. API methods
  4. transport
  5. publish/subscribe.

Wired events

First, define a named action:

{% wire name="test" action={growl text="Hello world"} %}

Then, call that action from your JavaScript code:

z_event("test");

Trigger notifications from JavaScript

Trigger a notification in Zotonic with the z_notify JavaScript function:

z_notify("mymessage");

or:

z_notify("mymessage", {foo: bar, who: "world"});

This will trigger a call to:

z_notifier:first(#postback_notify{message="mymessage"}, Context)

Which you can handle in any Zotonic module by defining:

-export([observe_postback_notify/2]).
observe_postback_notify(#postback_notify{message="mymessage"}, Context) ->
    Who = z_context:get_q(who, Context),
    z_render:growl("Hello " ++ Who, Context);
observe_postback_notify(_, _Context) ->
    undefined.

All arguments are available via the z_context:get_q/2 function (and friends).

Calling API services

A third way is to write your own API services and use standard JavaScript to perform Ajax GET/POST requests from the browser.

This use is perfectly possible and legal, although the other methods are preferred, as they integrate nicely with the notification and action systems. The API is more targeted to other applications interfacing to Zotonic.

Transport

The transport functions are a low-level layer, just above the WebSocket, Comet and AJAX methods used for communication between the server and the browser.

Zotonic has a message bus to transport data between server and browser. It transports structured data in different formats and supports retransmission in case of lost messages.

From browser to server

To send a message from the browser to the server:

z_transport("mod_example", "ubf", {hello: "world"});

And then on the server, use Erlang to process the message:

-module(mod_example).

-export([event/2]).

-include_lib("zotonic.hrl").

event(#z_msg_v1{data=Data}, Context) ->
    io:format("~p", [Data]),
    Context;

This will print on the console:

[{<<"hello">>,<<"world">>}]

Quality of service

The message will be sent with a quality of service of 0. That means the browser will try to send the message, but will not check if it arrived. Alterntively, you can send with a qos of 1, in that case the browser will wait for an ack, and if that doesn’t arrive in 30 seconds, then a duplicate message will be requeued for transport:

z_transport("mod_example", "ubf", {hello: "world"}, {qos: 1});

It is possible to define a callback function that will be called if an ack is received:

z_transport("mod_example", "ubf", {hello:"world"}, {
    qos: 1,
    ack: function(ackMsg, callOptions) {
        alert(ackMsg);
    }
});

From server to browser

Sending JavaScript (or other data) from the server to the browser is straightforward:

z_transport:page(javascript, <<"alert('Hello World');">>, Context);

This transports the JavaScript to the page associated with Context. This JavaScript will then be evaluated in the browser.

The default quality of service is 0 (see above); to let the page queue retry delivering the message it is possible to specify another quality of service:

z_transport:page(javascript, <<"alert('Hello World');">>, [{qos, 1}], Context);

It is also possible to send a message to all open pages of a session, or to all sessions of a user:

z_transport:session(javascript, <<"alert('Hello World');">>, [{qos, 1}], Context);
z_transport:user(javascript, <<"alert('Hello World');">>, [{qos, 1}], Context);

Or transport to a specific page, session or user, but then you will need to specify the message and the message-queue:

Msg = z_transport:msg(session, javascript, <<"alert('Hello World');">>, [{qos, 1}]).
z_transport:transport_user(Msg, UserId, Context).

The message queue is either session or page. It defines which queue will be responsible for resending the message and where the ack message is received. If user is specified as queue then it will be replaced by session.

Publish/subscribe (PubSub)

It is possible to publish and subscribe to topics on the server. Messages are relayed between the server and the browser.

See mod_mqtt for more information.

An example of MQTT PubSub usage is the custom tag live.

Transport mechanisms

Zotonic uses various mechanisms to transport data between the browser and the server:

AJAX calls also transport back data from the server to the browser.