Ajax for Web Application Developers

Book Description

Reusable components and patterns for Ajax-driven applications

Ajax is one of the latest and greatest ways to improve users’ online experience and create new and innovative web functionality. By allowing specific parts of a web page to be displayed without refreshing the entire page, Ajax significantly enhances the experience of web applications. It also lets web developers create intuitive and innovative interaction processes.

Ajax for Web Application Developers provides the in-depth working knowledge of Ajax that web developers need to take their web applications to the next level. The book shows how to create an Ajax-driven web application from an object-oriented perspective, and it includes discussion of several useful Ajax design patterns.

This detailed guide covers the creation of connections to a MySQL database with PHP 5 via a custom Ajax engine and shows how to gracefully format the response with CSS, JavaScript, and XHTML while keeping the data tightly secure. It also covers the use of four custom Ajax-enabled components in an application and how to create each of them from scratch.

The final section of the book combines the individual code examples and techniques from earlier chapters of the book into one larger, Ajax-driven application–an internal web mail application that can be used in any user-based application, such as a community-based web application. Readers will learn not only how to create and use their own reusable Ajax components in this application

but also how to connect their components to any future Ajax applications that they might build.

Web Development/Ajax/JavaScript

$34.99 USA / $43.99 CAN / £24.99 Net UK

Reviews From AMAZON.COM

New to Ajax? You may want to look elsewhere ...

I've been working on the Web for a handful+ of years, but save for a brief stunt back in the late 90s, I haven't had much use for JavaScript (with the exception of a few one/two-liners). As such, I came to this book as a new-comer to Ajax.

I also like to learn by way of example, instead of explanation, so code examples are a big plus, if not a requirement.

Unfortunately, from this background, my expectations for this book appear to have been set too high. Granted, it may be because of the lack of full examples in the book (and that they are not available online - more on this momentarily). In fact, that's probably the only thing holding me back.

There's minor errors in code in the book as well, but that's to be expected, and a second edition/printing will fix most of these. By itself, this shouldn't hold you back.

But as a beginner's resource, I'm not sure that this is the book you'd want to pick up. I actually recommend that you take a look elsewhere, particularly online, for how to start with Ajax.

Once you've got the basics down, then you can take a look at this book, as it does provide from very good tips as far as keeping your code standardized.

Had I been the first reviewer, I would have given this book four stars. Since I was not, I have decided to give it three. This is because I feel it's a good book, but not for as large an audience as you may think, based upon reading the description. Again, I feel that this book is more for if you've worked with Ajax, but not in a standard/formal way.


Regarding the code I mentioned above, while it's true that there is a zip file of the code files, I don't feel that it truly contains all of the necessary code. Again, keep in mind that I like to work with full code examples, especially when we're talking about JavaScript (since code is sometimes required in the HEAD, and sometimes not).

I have another Developer's Library book, PHP and MySQL Web Development (the Third Edition), so that's part of why my expectations may have been so high. But, I wasn't expecting the amount of full code that the ColdFusion MX 7 'blue books' provides. ;)

Even if you don't have a working application, let me see where you, the author, are at the end of a section or chapter, even if we're just creating one new file and/or adding code to an existing/new file. This goes for whether you write online or not. If there's code in a chapter, and it's not a snippet, than I'd like to see how the full document's code looks.

I don't care that it's not a complete application, I just may want to have your code on screen while I read through the chapter.

easier coding style

With all the recent buzz (hype) about Ajax, Hadlock goes back to first principles. He shows that it all centres about the XMLHttpRequest object, which he thankfully elides to XHR. This lets a web page get data from the web server, or post data to it, in the form of a background command. Crucially, it does not need the browser to be refreshed. Basically, it can be seen as a loophole, through which the entire Ajax methodology has emerged.

The book explains that XHR gives rise to a programming "style" that is quite different from traditional http coding. As though you are writing a standard application that runs locally. For many programmers, this may have been how you started programming anyway. Plus, http coding has always had a certain stilted awkwardness about it. The coding narrative of the book might seem more natural and easier. One benefit to the programmer is increased productivity. You should be able to code more functionality, and have fewer bugs.