JQuery UI Tabs - Load AJAX Tab content

Question

All,

I am using JQuery UI Nested tabs. Consider the structure like this: There are 2 Main tabs: Animals, Birds. Under Animals, there are two tabs "Cats", "Dogs". Both the tabs "Cats" and "Dogs" should be loaded via AJAX when selected.. So, the code for them is something like this:

<div id="fragment-1">
    <ul>
       <li><a href="/public/catstab" title="Cats"><span>Cats</span></a></li>
       <li><a href="/public/dogstab" title="Dogs"><span>Dogs</span></a></li>
    </ul>  
</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function()
{
    $("#tabs-loading-message").show();
    $('#fragment-1').tabs({cache:false, spinner:''});
});
</script>

The issue is, I want to maintain a common div to load the AJAX urls. Ex: When you click on Cats or Dogs, the content for those tabs, should go into "<div id='commonDiv'></div> instead of going into "cats" div and "dogs" div. The loading should be reusable, in the sense, if call reload("Dogs") from anywhere inside "dogs" tab, it should reload the "dogs" tab content.

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Just looking at the docs, nothings pops out as to how to do that. It's easy enough to not use the tabs widget though, and define your own click events for basic tab functionality.

<div id="fragment-1">
    <ul>
       <li><a href="/public/catstab" title="Cats"><span>Cats</span></a></li>
       <li><a href="/public/dogstab" title="Dogs"><span>Dogs</span></a></li>
    </ul>  
    <div id="commonDiv"></div>
</div>

$(document).ready(function(){
   $('#fragment-1 a').click(function(){
      $('#commonDiv').load($(this).attr('href'));
   });
}):

You would need to define your own css styles though, as it looks like the tabs widget does that for you.

Answer 2

Not sure if I understtod you well; as far as I know if you give all your tabs the same tittle atribute, the UI will rehuse the same DIV to load the content, instead of creating a new one for every tab and hide or show as required. Is a good thing since the browser doesn't get so heavy weighted with a lot of DIVS loaded but hidden ...