Looking for suggestions on AJAX-base update to view

Question

I have a requirement that I'm not sure how to go about implementing. The flow goes something like this:

1. User clicks button: share your update
2. Popup window opens
3. User fills in form and clicks Save
4. View is updated immediately to reflect update

I'm thinking I'll need a new content type for updates since the view being updated is for node content, not comments.

Anyway, I think I'll need to AJAX-load the node/add form, then somehow trigger the view to update upon saving the node. Perhaps it will work by using the Overlay module? (Note: I would only want the Overlay to be used in this one specific case.)

Anyone done this that can provide some pointers and/or some links?

Thanks,

Dan

Answer 1

Wow this was not all that difficult after all.

The following forces the overlay to only be used for my desired node type and admin pages:

<?php
  function yourmodule_admin_paths_alter(&$paths) {
  $paths['node/add/user-update'] = TRUE;
  $paths['user'] = FALSE;
  $paths['user/*'] = FALSE;
  $paths['users/*'] = FALSE;
  $paths['node/*/edit'] = FALSE;
  // Add this for each content type you don't want the overlay to be used for.
  $paths['node/add/other-types'] = FALSE;
?>

Then I needed a rule to redirect to my view (home page in this case) after the content was added:

{ "rules_redirect" : {
"LABEL" : "Redirect to home page",
"PLUGIN" : "reaction rule",
"REQUIRES" : [ "rules" ],
"ON" : [ "node_insert" ],
"IF" : [
  { "node_is_of_type" : {
      "node" : [ "node" ],
      "type" : { "value" : { "user_update" : "user_update" } }
    }
  }
],
"DO" : [ { "redirect" : { "url" : "\/" } } ]
  }
}

The combination of the two makes it appear as if the user is adding a "quick update".