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pjax is a jQuery plugin that uses ajax and pushState to deliver a fast browsing experience with real permalinks, page titles, and a working back button.

pjax works by fetching HTML from your server via ajax and replacing the contentof a container element on your page with the loaded HTML. It then updates thecurrent URL in the browser using pushState. This results in faster pagenavigation for two reasons:

• No page resources (JS, CSS) get re-executed or re-applied;
• If the server is configured for pjax, it can render only partial pagecontents and thus avoid the potentially costly full layout render.

jquery-pjax islargely unmaintained at this point. It might continue toreceive important bug fixes, butits feature set is frozen and it's unlikelythat it will get new features or enhancements.

pjax depends on jQuery 1.8 or higher.

$ npm install jquery-pjax

Download and includejquery.pjax.js in your web page:

curl -LO https://raw.github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax/master/jquery.pjax.js

The simplest and most common use of pjax looks like this:

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

This will enable pjax on all links on the page and designate the container as#pjax-container.

If you are migrating an existing site, you probably don't want to enable pjaxeverywhere just yet. Instead of using a global selector likea, try annotatingpjaxable links withdata-pjax, then use'a[data-pjax]' as your selector. Or,try this selector that matches any<a data-pjax href=> links inside a<div data-pjax> container:

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

Ideally, your server should detect pjax requests by looking at the specialX-PJAX HTTP header, and render only the HTML meant to replace the contents ofthe container element (#pjax-container in our example) without the rest ofthe page layout. Here is an example of how this might be done in Ruby on Rails:

defindexifrequest.headers['X-PJAX']render:layout=>falseendend

If you'd like a more automatic solution than pjax for Rails check outTurbolinks.

Check if there is a pjax plugin for your favorite server framework.

Also check outRailsCasts #294: Playing with PJAX.

The synopsis for the$.fn.pjax function is:

$(document).pjax(selector,[container],options)

1. selector is a string to be used for clickevent delegation.
2. container is a string selector that uniquely identifies the pjax container.
3. options is an object with keys described below.

You can change the defaults globally by writing to the$.pjax.defaults object:

$.pjax.defaults.timeout=1200

This is a lower level function used by$.fn.pjax itself. It allows you to get a little more control over the pjax event handling.

This example uses the current click context to set an ancestor element as the container:

if($.support.pjax){$(document).on('click','a[data-pjax]',function(event){varcontainer=$(this).closest('[data-pjax-container]')varcontainerSelector='#'+container.id$.pjax.click(event,{container:containerSelector})})}

NOTE Use the explicit$.support.pjax guard. We aren't using$.fn.pjax so we should avoid binding this event handler unless the browser is actually going to use pjax.

Submits a form via pjax.

$(document).on('submit','form[data-pjax]',function(event){$.pjax.submit(event,'#pjax-container')})

Initiates a request for the current URL to the server using pjax mechanism and replaces the container with the response. Does not add a browser history entry.

$.pjax.reload('#pjax-container',options)

Manual pjax invocation. Used mainly when you want to start a pjax request in a handler that didn't originate from a click. If you can get access to a clickevent, consider$.pjax.click(event) instead.

functionapplyFilters(){varurl=urlForFilters()$.pjax({url:url,container:'#pjax-container'})}

All pjax events exceptpjax:click &pjax:clicked are fired from the pjaxcontainer element.

pjax:send &pjax:complete are a good pair of events to use if you are implementing aloading indicator. They'll only be triggered if an actual XHR request is made,not if the content is loaded from cache:

$(document).on('pjax:send',function(){$('#loading').show()})$(document).on('pjax:complete',function(){$('#loading').hide()})

An example of canceling apjax:timeout event would be to disable the fallbacktimeout behavior if a spinner is being shown:

$(document).on('pjax:timeout',function(event){// Prevent default timeout redirection behaviorevent.preventDefault()})

The whole point of pjax is that it fetches and inserts new contentwithoutrefreshing the page. However, other jQuery plugins or libraries that are set toreact on page loaded event (such asDOMContentLoaded) will not pick up onthese changes. Therefore, it's usually a good idea to configure these plugins toreinitialize in the scope of the updated page content. This can be done like so:

$(document).on('ready pjax:end',function(event){$(event.target).initializeMyPlugin()})

This will make$.fn.initializeMyPlugin() be called at the document level onnormal page load, and on the container level after any pjax navigation (eitherafter clicking on a link or going Back in the browser).

By default, pjax will force a full reload of the page if it receives one of thefollowing responses from the server:

• Page content that includes<html> whenfragment selector wasn't explicitlyconfigured. Pjax presumes that the server's response hasn't been properlyconfigured for pjax. Iffragment pjax option is given, pjax will extract thecontent based on that selector.

• Page content that is blank. Pjax assumes that the server is unable to deliverproper pjax contents.

• HTTP response code that is 4xx or 5xx, indicating some server error.

If the server needs to affect the URL which will appear in the browser URL afterpjax navigation (like HTTP redirects work for normal requests), it can set theX-PJAX-URL header:

defindexrequest.headers['X-PJAX-URL']="http://example.com/hello"end

Layouts can be forced to do a hard reload when assets or html changes.

First set the initial layout version in your header with a custom meta tag.

<metahttp-equiv="x-pjax-version"content="v123">

Then from the server side, set theX-PJAX-Version header to the same.

ifrequest.headers['X-PJAX']response.headers['X-PJAX-Version']="v123"end

Deploying a deploy, bumping the version constant to force clients to do a full reload the next request getting the new layout and assets.