The AJAX method for development of an application
computer science
Description
Unlike most of the other tools with which you worked throughout this Module, AJAX is
unique in that it is not a singular technology. Rather, it is a collection of pre-existing
techniques (e.g., JavaScript and XML). This asynchronous tool is particularly
advantageous in the sense that it does not require Web pages to reload for dynamic
content to display. This means improved interactivity. Moreover, AJAX tends to be quite
compact, with a single Web page capable of handling many different applications at
once. AJAX is not without disadvantages, though.
For example, many Web users turn
off JavaScript functionality; since AJAX is built on JavaScript, this can prove
problematic. Nevertheless, there are ways to work around these problems; thus, such
issues should not be a deterrent to learning AJAX. As such, you are developing your
first AJAX client for this Discussion.
Attached to this week's Learning Resources is an AJAX example. Consider this
example of a simple AJAX client to a simple PHP Web service over the HTTP protocol.
The example is a zip file (AJAXDQ.zip - available in the Week 7 Learning Resources) of
a PHP NetBeans project that uses the built-in local Web server of NetBeans. The
example uses two files:
1. getCurrentDateTime.php—a simple PHP file that returns the current UTC/GMT
date and time
2. MyFirstAJAXClient.html—a simple AJAX client that invokes the
getCurrentDateTime.php over AJAX
The results of running this example are shown in this screenshot as Step 1 (before
clicking the button) and Step 2 (after clicking the button):
