External List and jQuery

Question

I have an external list that I want to hackup with jQuery. If i put a simple alert in document .ready, it fires, and THEN the SharePoint progress spinner shows up, and then the data is returned - long after document.ready. Has anyone been able to use jQuery to manipulate the results of a SharePoint external list? I hope that makes sense.

Answer 1

I ran into this problem as well. You have to do periodic polling of the DOM to detect when the content is loaded. What I implemented looked something like this:

 $().ready(function () {
    checkForDOMAndCalculate();
});

function checkForDOMAndCalculate() {
setTimeout(checkDOM, 100);
}

function checkDOM() {
displayValueIndex = $("tr.ms-viewheadertr.ms-vhltr th             a:contains('DisplayValue')").closest("th").index();
approvalStatusIndex = $("tr.ms-viewheadertr.ms-vhltr th  a:contains('ApprovalStatus')").closest("th").index();

if (displayValueIndex == undefined || displayValueIndex == -1) {
checkForDOMAndCalculate();

}
else {
doCalculations();
} 
}

Here's what the code does: it delays for 1/10 of a second, looks for a particular value in the DOM using jQuery, and if it finds it, proceeds with the calculations. If it doesn't find it, it waits another 1/10 second and tries again. It repeats this until it finds the DOM has loaded.

The key to this is the setTimeout() function, which executes the delay and then the code.

Answer 2

I would recommend you to check the SPServices, it is Client Object Model ... check msdn for that. I think with that you can manipulate the data on the client side and then probably pass to your own JQuery functions etc ...