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Applying Ajax Behavior to Events on Any Component

Using command links and buttons to implement a partial page update is relatively simple, but suppose you want to have the same page update occur just by hovering the mouse over a contact's name?

To do this with the contact list example, remove the <apex:commandLink> tag from the data table and wrap the contact name in an <apex:outputPanel> tag instead. Within this output panel, add an <apex:actionSupport> element as a sibling of the contact's name:
  • The <apex:outputPanel> tag defines the area over in which we want the specialized behavior.
  • The <apex:actionSupport> tag defines the partial page update behavior that was implemented previously by the command link.
    • The event attribute specifies the DOM event that should trigger the update. Whereas <apex:commandLink> only executes during the “onclick” event, <apex:actionSupport> can execute on any valid event such as “onclick”, “ondblclick”, or, for this example, “onmouseover”.
    • The reRender attribute specifies which part of the page should refresh.
    • The <apex:param> tag sets the value of the cid query string parameter when the specified event occurs.

The resulting markup looks like this:

1swfobject.registerObject("clippy.codeblock-0", "9");<apex:page standardController="Account">
2    <apex:pageBlock title="Hello {!$User.FirstName}!">
3        You are displaying contacts from the {!account.name} account. 
4        Mouse over a contact's name to view his or her details.
5    </apex:pageBlock>
6    <apex:pageBlock title="Contacts">
7        <apex:form>
8            <apex:dataTable value="{!account.Contacts}" var="contact" cellPadding="4" 
9                               border="1">
10                  <apex:column>
11                      <apex:outputPanel>
12                          <apex:actionSupport event="onmouseover" rerender="detail"> 
13                              <apex:param name="cid" value="{!contact.id}"/>
14                          </apex:actionSupport> 
15                          {!contact.Name}
16                      </apex:outputPanel> 
17                  </apex:column>
18            </apex:dataTable>
19        </apex:form>
20    </apex:pageBlock>
21    <apex:outputPanel id="detail">
22        <apex:actionStatus startText="Requesting...">
23            <apex:facet name="stop">
24                <apex:detail subject="{!$CurrentPage.parameters.cid}" relatedList="false" 
25                                title="false"/>
26            </apex:facet>
27        </apex:actionStatus>
28    </apex:outputPanel>
29</apex:page>

After saving the page, move the mouse over any contact and notice that the detail area refreshes appropriately without clicking on it.