Ajax Busy Indicators in WEF

This is my first posting for websphere portlet factory re-branded as web experience factory. I guess I'll have to get used to WEF, at least it sounds like a word now although not very meaningful.

Looking Under the Hood

I often seem to find myself snooping in code, usually when trying to fix a bug or extend some OOTB functionality to my liking. In this case I had a need to display some busy indicators during an unusually long ajax call, which led me to the javascript that enables ajax in WEF.

The file of interest is WebContent\factory\clientjavascript\ajax\ppr.js and inside it, the following code can be found:

// Can overload these to, e.g., show a progress indicator for long operations.
    startLoad: function() { },
    endLoad: function() {  },

Since directly altering this file is not a good idea, we can instead take the advice in the comment and overload the functions in our own script:

dojo.require("dojox.widget.Standby");
   var standby = new dojox.widget.Standby({
         target: "basic2"
   });

wpf_ppr.startLoad = function(){standby.show()};
wpf_ppr.endLoad = function(){standby.hide()};

I've used the dojo standby widget which does a great job communicating to the user that something is taking place while disabling part of the UI, preventing unnecessary repeated requests.

 Done!