What is the best way to implement ajax based pagination on custom query based templates?

Question

We can use multiple plugins like wp-pagenavi or wp-paginate for implementing pagination for wordpress sites and making it ajax based using the following code:

jQuery(document).ready(function(){
    // ajax pagination
    jQuery('#wp_page_numbers a').live('click', function(){ 

        var link = jQuery(this).attr('href');                   
        jQuery('#main').html('Loading'); 
        jQuery('#main').load(link+' #entries')
    });
}); // end ready function

Sometimes, there are some cases where we want to display results based on custom query (i.e fetching results from the tables other than wordpress default tables) on a page template.

What is the best way for implementing pagination in this case?

Answer 1

Soumitra Chakraborty wrote a very good tutorial on Getting Started with AJAX & WordPress Pagination. I would recommend following that pattern (in terms of how to use admin_ajax.php in conjunction with your functions.php.

That tutorial will give you a great framework for how to implement ajax pagination by hand.

In terms of your own specific requirements for a custom query (which it sounds like might involve getting data from non-standard tables) you can use the WP_Query class to do some pretty advanced stuff (like what you describe) in your custom function that you define in functions.php.