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PHP & AJAX Presentation Online
the.admin.man writes "There's been quite a bit of buzz around using PHP as a backend to AJAX-based web applications (the same development methodology on which some Google applications), lately, particularly after the release of JPSpan, a framework that helps building XML-based interfaces between Javascript and PHP apps. Just yesterday, Joshua Eichorn gave a presentation to the Arizona PHP Group on developing AJAX applications for PHP--he's posted the slides online, and will give his presentation again through a free webcast hosted by php|architect."
I've been working in a prototype AJAX application for a while now and it really is a very nice idea. One cool thing that I discovered, is that javascript isn't the terrible language I always thought it was. Granted, it's not very sophisticated, but you can actually do OO programming in javascript. Notably, you can create classes, use event listeners on these classes.
However, what I'd really like to see is a good javascript library that acts as an abstraction layer that removes the browser differences in javascript, css and html support.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
Yeah, I've implememted it on our intranet for certain types of reporting.
:/
Personally, I love it. Once I figured it out, it struck me at how clunky my old code was. There are many areas where I went through WAY too much trouble putting things into JS arrays and whatnot because I didn't want the visitor to have to refresh. But now I can use common PHP code to get the data when I need it.
The one thing I will say is that there seems to be a lot of needlessly complicated example code out there. I've implemented the entire system in 3 JS functions, and it works flawlessly. I'd post it here, but somehow I feel I'd either be looked at as a karma whore or a redundant post.
Either way, you should try it. It's not that hard, and the results are definitely useful.