Ajax Tutorials

1. Creating a MySQL connection with PHP/AJAX
   The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the XMLHttpRequest object works within php and the advantages of using it. This tutorial will be the first in a series of articles leading to the development of a fully functional dynamic web events application. AJAX is a fancy technique for creating websites that gather information from servers without having to refresh themselves. I could get into the nitty-gritty about advantages and disadvantages of using AJAX but for now all you need to know is any users action that would normally generate a HTTP request takes the form of a JavaScript call to the AJAX engine instead. The engine makes any data requests asynchronously without pausing a user?s interaction with the web application.
   
2. Getting Started with Ajax
   Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. In a nutshell, it is the use of the nonstandard XMLHttpRequest() object to communicate with server-side scripts. It can send as well as receive information in a variety of formats, including XML, HTML, and even text files. Ajax?s most appealing characteristic, however, is its ?asynchronous? nature, which means it can do all of this without having to refresh the page. This allows you to update portions of a page based upon user events and provides one of the cornerstones of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) referred to in discussions of ?Web 2.0.? The DOM plays into Ajax in a number of ways. How you use the DOM depends a good deal on how you handle the content returned from the server. You can treat the con­tent as simple text using the response Text property of the server response, or you can treat it as XML using responseXML.
      
3. Mastering Ajax part-2
   Most Web applications use a request/response model that gets an entire HTML page from the server. The result is a back-and-forth that usually involves clicking a button, waiting for the server, clicking another button, and then waiting some more. With Ajax and the XMLHttpRequest object, you can use a request/response model that never leaves users waiting for a server to respond. In this article, Brett McLaughlin shows you how to create XMLHttpRequest instances in a cross-browser way, construct and send requests, and respond to the server. In the last article of this series, you were introduced to the Ajax applications and looked at some of the basic concepts that drive Ajax applications. At the center of this was a lot of technology that you probably already know about: JavaScript, HTML and XHTML, a bit of dynamic HTML, and even some DOM. In this article, I will zoom in from that 10,000-foot view and focus on specific Ajax details. 
     
4. Mastering Ajax: Introduction to Ajax
   Ajax, which consists of HTML, JavaScript? technology, DHTML, and DOM, is an outstanding approach that helps you transform clunky Web interfaces into interactive Ajax applications. The author, an Ajax expert, demonstrates how these technologies work together - from an overview to a detailed look -- to make extremely efficient Web development an easy reality. He also unveils the central concepts of Ajax, including the XMLHttpRequest object. Five years ago, if you didn't know XML, you were the ugly duckling whom nobody talked to. Eighteen months ago, Ruby came into the limelight and programmers who didn't know what was going on with Ruby weren't welcome at the water cooler. Today, if you want to get into the latest technology rage, Ajax is where it's at. These are both familiar; desktop applications usually come on a CD and install completely on your computer. They might use the Internet to download updates, but the code that runs these applications resides on your desktop. Web applications -- and there's no surprise here -- run on a Web server somewhere and you access the application with your Web browser.
      
5. Guide to Using AJAX and XMLHttpRequest from WebPasties
   The XMLHttpRequest object is a handy dandy JavaScript object that offers a convenient way for webpages to get information from servers without refreshing themselves. The benefit to end users is that they don't have to type as much and they don't have to wait as long. For example, having the user's city and state show up in a webpage automatically after the ZIP code has been typed in is a big time saver. Although the XMLHttpRequest object might sound complex and different from any other JavaScript object you have ever used, it really isn't. A good way to think of the XMLHttpRequest object is as you would think of the JavaScript Image object. As we know, with the Image object you can dynamically specify a new URL for the image source without reloading the page. Similarly with the XMLHttpRequest object, you can dynamically specify a URL to get some server data without reloading the page.
    
6. Direct Web Remoting
   DWR allows JavaScript in a browser to interact with Java on a server and helps you manipulate web pages with the results. Our stable release is DWR version 1.1. We are developing DWR version 2.0, and recently announced 'Reverse Ajax' which allows Java on the server to asynchronously send JavaScript to the client. License" shall mean the terms and conditions for use, reproduction, and distribution as defined by Sections 1 through 9 of this document. Licensor" shall mean the copyright owner or entity authorized by the copyright owner that is granting the License. Legal Entity" shall mean the union of the acting entity and all other entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common control with that entity. For the purposes of this definition, "control" means (i) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (ii) ownership of fifty percent (50%) or more of the outstanding shares, or (iii) beneficial ownership of such entity. 
      
7. Sajax Toolkit
   Commercial consulting and support now available. Get support from the people who made Ajax easy for the masses. If your staff needs a helping hand with your Ajax project, we now offer commercial support and consulting. Email support for the Sajax library starts at an affordable $199 per year. We can help you build your project for rates from $150 per hour. Contact us for more information. Sajax itself remains under the open source BSD license. Breaking news: After a long delay, Sajax version 0.12 is finally out. PHP support has been much improved, including many bug fixes and improvements to the serialization support. Please download the new version and contact us if you find any bugs. Sajax is an open source tool to make programming websites using the Ajax framework - also known as XMLHTTPRequest or remote scripting - as easy as possible. Sajax makes it easy to call PHP, Perl or Python functions from your webpages via JavaScript without performing a browser refresh. The toolkit does 99% of the work for you so you have no excuse to not use it. 
       
8. JavaScript Rico Internet Application
   Ajax is the term that describes a set of web development techniques for creating interactive web applications. One of the key ingredients is the JavaScript object XmlHttpRequest. Rico provides a very simple interface for registering Ajax request handlers as well as HTML elements or JavaScript objects as Ajax response objects. Multiple elements and/or objects may be updated as the result of one Ajax request. Desktop applications have long used drag and drop in their interfaces to simplify user interaction. Rico provides one of the simplest interfaces for enabling your web application to support drag and drop. Just register any HTML element or JavaScript object as a drag gable and any other HTML element or JavaScript object as a drop zone and Rico handles the rest.
      
9. How does xajax work?
   The xajax PHP object generates JavaScript wrapper functions for the PHP functions you want to be able to call asynchronously from your application. When called, these wrapper functions use JavaScript's XMLHttpRequest object to asynchronously communicate with the xajax object on the server which calls the corresponding PHP functions. Upon completion, an xajax XML response is returned from the PHP functions, which xajax passes back to the application. The XML response contains instructions and data that are parsed by xajax's JavaScript message pump and used to update the content of your application. xajax's unique XML response / JavaScript message-pump system does the work for you, automatically handling the data returned from your functions and updating your content or state according to the instructions you return from your PHP functions. Because xajax does the work, you don't have to write JavaScript callback handler functions.
     
10. Welcome to Ajax any where 
    AjaxAnywhere is designed to turn any set of existing JSP or JSF components into AJAX-aware components without complex JavaScript coding. In contrast to other solutions AjaxAnywhere is not component-oriented. You will not find here yet another AutoComplete component. Simply separate your web page into multiple zones, and use AjaxAnywhere to refresh only those zones that needs to be updated. Advantages
    * Less JavaScript to develop and to maintain. Absence of commonly accepted naming convention, formatting rules, patterns makes JavaScript code messier then Java/JSP. It is extremely difficult to debug and unit-test it in multi-browser environment. Get rid of all those complexities by using AjaxAnywhere.
    * Easy to integrate. AjaxAnywhere does not require changing the underlying application code.
    * Lower technical risk. Switch whenever you need between AJAX and traditional behaviour of your web application. Your application can also support both behaviors. 
      
11. How To Use AJAX
    AJAX, an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is the latest technology buzzword. Asynchronous means that you can make a request to a server via Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and continue to process other data while waiting for the response. This means, for example, that you can make calls to a server-side script to retrieve data from a database as XML, send data to a server-side script to be stored in a database, or simply load an XML file to populate pages of your Web site without refreshing the page. However, along with all of the benefits, AJAX sparks some unquestionable debate over issues with the Back button. This article will help you to determine when AJAX is a good solution for developing your users' experiences.
       
12. Very Dynamic Web Interfaces
    One of the classic drawbacks to building a web application interface is that once a page has been downloaded to the client, the connection to the server is severed. Any attempt at a dynamic interface involves a full roundtrip of the whole page back to the server for a rebuild--a process which tends to make your web app feel inelegant and unresponsive. In this article, I'll be exploring how this problem can be tackled with the use of JavaScript and the XMLHttpRequest object. The user requests a page from the server, which is built and delivered to the browser. This page includes an HTML form element for capturing data from the user. Once the user posts their input back to the server, the next page can be built and served based on the input, and so the process continues. This is largely dictated by the nature of HTTP and differs from the traditional desktop application model of an interface which is inherently connected to the application layer.
       
13. AJAX: Getting Started
    AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a newly coined term for two powerful browser features that have been around for years, but were overlooked by many web developers until recently when applications such as Gmail, Google Suggest, and Google Maps hit the streets.
    The two features in question are that you can:
    * Make requests to the server without reloading the page
    * Parse and work with XML documents 
      
14. Using the XML HTTP Request object
    Internet Explorer on Windows, Safari on Mac OS-X, Mozilla on all platforms, Konqueror in KDE, Ice Browser on Java, and Opera on all platforms including Symbian provide a method for client side JavaScript to make HTTP requests. From the humble begins as an oddly named object with few admirers, it's blossomed to be the core technology in something called AJAX . The Object makes many things easier and neater than they other would be, and introduces some things that were otherwise impossible such as HEAD requests to see when a resource was last modified, or to see if it even exists. It makes your scripting options more flexible allowing for POST requests without having the page change, and opens up the possibility of using PUT, DELETE etc. These methods are increasingly used to provide richer Web Applications like G-Mail that use lower bandwidth and offer snappier user interaction. 
     
15. Ajax Tutorial
    Getting to a semi-usable point with my system took me about a week of part-time digging, and coding. This was done on evenings, and only when I could get an hour here and there to work on it. My goal was three-fold.
    1. The ability to have PHP output discrete portions of a page (a major part of AJAX)
    2. To be able to take those different pieces and have a simple way to update the html page
    3. To be able to submit form information to a script and have the results returned as in point 1
      
16. AJAX: Instant Tutorial
    After taking a look at this tutorial and a couple others, I was dissapointed at the quality of the code so here?s a quick tutorial to get you jump started with AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML). I am using object detection and explain some of the caveats for doing what I am doing. Simply put, AJAX allows you to make a call to an http server (typically an RSS feed or a webpage), get it?s content and load them into your existing page without having to refresh the whole page. This means that services like email don?t have to reload the whole page everytime you click a message, saving on bandwidth (loading the header/footer all over again) and making things more efficient.
      
17. A Simpler Ajax Path
    I began working with web applications back in the bad old days, when making an application behave like a desktop app meant wrestling with byzantine table-based layouts nested five and six levels deep, and horrid, hackish frame sets within frame sets within frame sets. Those were the days. Things have steadily improved for web developers with the advent of standards-compliant browsers, CSS, DHTML, and the DOM. Pervasive broadband access has made web apps feel a lot snappier. Now something called the XMLHttpRequest object makes it even easier to develop full-blown, super interactive applications to deploy in the browser.
       
18. The Hows and Whys of Degradable Ajax
    While working on Particle tree's shopping cart system for our magazine, we decided that we wanted to create a flawless user experience for all users without having to sacrifice the added user interface benefits provided by Ajax goodness. A lot of places will tell you that it is ok to use JavaScript and Ajax as long as it?s not mission critical. Well, we don?t think web apps have to be boring to be reliable. And so we?ve developed some solid strategies to help us use Ajax in our apps without having to worry if they?re essential or not to the application. After some heavy experimenting, we?ve developed a method for making web pages work regardless of the user?s browser settings. While other sites have implemented their own versions of degradable Ajax, we found the lack of documentation on the subject discouraging. And so it is with great pleasure that we present to you the Particle tree method of degradable Ajax.
      
19. Remote Scripting with AJAX
    This two-part series of articles covers remote scripting using the AJAX XMLHttpRequest protocol. Part one walks through an example application that demonstrates how to implement the protocol, while part two will show how to create a usable interface. To begin, download the code archive, which contains all of the files you'll need to create the working examples presented here and for the upcoming second part of this series. Essentially, remote scripting allows client-side JavaScript to request data from a server without having to refresh the web page. That's it. Everything else that goes into making a seamless web application draws upon the established methods of manipulating the Document Object Model. However, remote scripting and seamless applications bring with them a host of problems from the desktop application design realm, making those same issues possible on the Web.
      
20. AJAX made simple with DWR
    AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, describes a Web development technique for creating interactive Web applications using a combination of HTML (or XHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets for presenting information; Document Object Model (DOM); JavaScript, to dynamically display and interact with the information presented; and the XMLHttpRequest object to interchange and manipulate data asynchronously with the Web server. Many examples on the Internet show all the necessary steps for using XMLHttpRequest to communicate with the server from within an HTML file. When manually writing and maintaining the XMLHttpRequest code, a developer must deal with many potential problems, especially with cross-browser compatibilities like different DOM implementations. This can lead to countless hours spent coding and debugging JavaScript code, which is not known to be developer friendly.
       
21. An Introduction To Ajax
    As J2EE developers, it seems we are constantly focused on "backend mechanics." Often, we forget that the main success of J2EE has been around the Web application; people love developing applications that utilize the Web for many reasons, but mainly because the ease of deployment allows a site to have millions of users with minimal cost. Unfortunately, over the years we have invested too much time in the back end and not enough time in making our Web user interfaces natural and responsive to our users. This article introduces a methodology, Ajax, you can use to build more dynamic and responsive Web applications. The key lies in the combination of browser-side JavaScript, DHTML, and asynchronous communication with the server. This article also demonstrates just how easy it is to start using this approach, by leveraging an Ajax framework (DWR) to construct an application that communicates with backend services directly from the browser. If used properly, this tremendous power allows your application to be more natural and responsive to your users, thereby providing an improved browsing experience.
       
22. Developing AJAX Applications the Easy Way
    AJAX is the buzzword of the moment among web developers, so much so that you could be sick of introductions to AJAX by now (if that's the case, skip down to "The Chat Web Page"). AJAX is a technology that is hotly debated from many angles, but it has stuck because it encapsulates something that is new from a user's perspective. The functionally that is newly available to all web users is "in-page replacement": the ability for a web page to change using data from a web server without totally redrawing itself. This functionality has been around in Mozilla and Internet Explorer for a while, but it is only recently that Safari and Konqueror users have been able to join in. AJAX isn't the best acronym in the world: it stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. This does nothing to describe the benefits to a user: the technology behind it does not have to be asynchronous, and the best implementations don't necessarily use XML, either. However, the buzzword has stuck so we are better off going with the flow now.
      
23. Ajax on Rails
    In a few short months, Ajax has moved from an obscure and rarely used technology to the hottest thing since sliced bread. This article introduces the incredibly easy-to-use Ajax support that is part of the Ruby on Rails web application framework. This is not a step-by-step tutorial, and I assume that you know a little bit about how to organize and construct a Rails web application. If you need a quick refresher, check out Rolling with Ruby on Rails, Part 1 and Part 2. In the beginning, there was the World Wide Web. Compared with desktop applications, web applications were slow and clunky. People liked web applications anyway because they were conveniently available from anywhere, on any computer that had a browser. Then Microsoft created XMLHttpRequest in Internet Explorer 5, which let browser-side JavaScript communicate with the web server in the background without requiring the browser to display a new web page. That made it possible to develop more fluid and responsive web applications. 
     
24. Ajax Mistakes
    Ajax is also a dangerous technology for web developers, its power introduces a huge amount of UI problems as well as server side state problems and server load problems. I?ve compiled a list of the many mistakes developers using Ajax often make. Sure Ajax is cool, and developers love to play with cool technology, but Ajax is a tool not a toy. A lot of the new Ajax applications are really just little toys, not developed for any real purpose, just experiments in what Ajax can do or trying to fit Ajax somewhere where it isn?t needed. Toys might be fun for a little while, but toys are not useful applications. The back button is a great feature of standard web site user interfaces. Unfortunately, the back button doesn?t mesh very well with JavaScript. Keeping back button functionality is a major reason not to go with a pure JavaScript web app.