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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."
...latter. Ajax, though neat, isn't going to change the world, but it will make a lot of websites a lot easier to use.
Generally, all Ajax does is replace the constant "page jumping" that occurs with past server-client web pages. For example, when you are looking for something, and you have to jump across a hundred pages to find it, or when you're filling out a form, it doesn't jump to a new page for "confirmation".
I'm sure there will be a lot of other great uses for it as well. Does anyone remember games like "Stellar Crisis"? I'm sure it'd stand to gain a LOT from Ajax.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Well... Funny thing, I was researching AJAX earlier today. It certainly looks cool, particualry if you read this article: http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/ar chives/000385.php
that's linked in the Wikipedia article and look at the cool stuff that Google's been doing with it. But I'm not convinced that it's far enough along for companies that don't have a ton Phds on staff to jump into... Has anyone here implemeted AJAX?
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.
After reading the article, it sounds like they are using a Javascript processor on the client side instead of using a PHP processor on the server side. Whether you use AJAX is really dependent on whether you believe processing should be done on the server, client or both. This is more alphabet soup. I'll stick with PHP on the server and Javascript on the client for now.
I have, on private sites, and I use xmlrpc rather than xml+xslt, but otherwise the same. I use virtual cowboys js lib for that. on the client, in ASP, i use the lib I worked over from Carter-Todd. In php, i don't, and I use Python's xmlrpclib to test the client-side stuff. I do database updates, retrieve values, settings, and html blocks (escape/unscape is your friend, since xmlrpc can't pass xml docs)
Should also say that it's not easy, but it's doable. Use firefox + webdeveloper toobar by Chris Pederick to get info on the page, and check that javascript console for error messages.
Finally, writing down on old fashioned paper what the beast will look like is invaluable.
"Piter, too, is dead."
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.
You can do "ajax" with any server-side technology, the key to ajax is doing HTTP calls via javascript instead of whenever the user clicks a link, so who cares what's on the other side?
;-)
Of course I have to plug Ruby on Rails here.. adding dynamic stuff to your app is just 1 or 2 lines of code. This is how it should be!
PHP is fine too, if you bill by the hour.
It's called Prototype, and it's available right here.
It's very well written, gets a lot of maintenance, and even has some eye candy as a bonus.
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For the love of all that's holy and good can we please stop calling it Ajax? It's one bloody JavaScript object. Great that it's being used more often, good on Google for getting it out there and popular but it just doesn't do the technology any good to overhype it. If we are going to call it something cute it should be Greasemonkey because monkeys and grease are cool.
.innerHTML = whatever). World changing or not it's more fun than a car full of fat people
In any case I've built a greasy little forum app that uses the shit out of XmlHttpRequest and it doesn't really require any special toolkits. It's just a matter of making calls to the server with JavaScript and using the response to populate your page (generally with
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