Appending content doesn't work if one of the targets is missing about unpoly HOT 2 CLOSED

All targets must be present in both current page and response for a partial replacement to succeed. If any selector is missing in either, Unpoly will assume the page is in an unexpected state. It will then go through the selectors in up.dom.config.fallbacks to find an alternative match.

The default for up.dom.config.fallbacks is ['body'] which is why you're seeing the whole page replaced when .button--load-more is missing.

The workaround I'm currently using is returning something like this on the last page:

That's how I would implement this. You can hide unwanted margins around the element with a CSS rule like .button--load-more:empty { display: none }.

Is there a way to set "soft" targets, so if they are missing from the response they get removed instead?

Not currently. I think it's a good idea for a future feature, although we would need to think hard about the expected behavior when an optional target is missing from the response. I think someone could expect three different things:

• Remove the unmatched element from the current page (your expectation)
• Don't change the unmatched element (this is how [up-hungry] works)
• Empty the content of the unmatched element

One possible issue with removing the unmatched element is that once it's removed, it can no longer match in a future replacement. In your example, if another link wants to go back to page 1 by replacing .news-list, .button--load-more:optional, we would never get that button back.

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Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation! I'm fine with the workaround.

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