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PHP Programming

PHP & AJAX Presentation Online 33

Posted by timothy from the bend-it-to-your-will dept.
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."
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PHP & AJAX Presentation Online

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  • I got this crazy idea about becoming a web developer and I been learning all the individual technologies to put stuff together. But it seems like I'm missing the grand overview something that would tie everything together. Is AJAX the silver bullet I can use to build all those awesome Google-like websites? Or is it more alphabet soup that I'll probably end up throwing out later after I bought all the overpriced books?

    • Most likely the... (Score:4, Informative)

      by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2005 @05:07PM (#12364559)
      ...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.

    • Re:What is this... (Score:3, Informative)

      by hhlost ( 757118 )
      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 [adaptivepath.com] 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?
      • 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.

      • Re:What is this... (Score:2, Informative)

        by chris_mahan ( 256577 )
        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 t

      • Re:What is this... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by paRcat ( 50146 )
        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 impleme
      • Yes, actually not only have I implemented it, I've built a toolkit to automate it. (I hate doing boring reptative work). The XAB toolkit [kessin.com] can build an Ajax based database application (or at least most of one) for you with automaticly generated PHP, XML and Javascript. It uses Mozilla's SOAPCall functionality so for right now it won't work in IE, but I expect to fix that at some point.

        There is also a program in there to take a PHP class and automaticly generate javascript code to wrap it.

        I have also set up
    • There is no silver bullet. To make a non-trivial web application you will need to write in the following languages/technologies:

      SQL for the database.
      A server-side application language like PHP, Coldfusion, Java/JSP, Ruby, etc.
      HTML for the client-side layout.
      Javascript for the client-side application program.

      AJAX just refers to a Javascript programming technique.

      > I got this crazy idea about becoming a web developer

      I got this sane idea to STOP being a web developer... you know, what with having to pay
    • Ajax is just using XMLHttpRequest to get object and using Javascript DOM to update the page accordingly.

      There are various ways to accomplish this, depending on what toolkits you use to make your website. But certainly, an Ajax'd web application feels a lot smoother and more friendly than a non-Ajax'd application.

      It's especially useful when editing lists, tables, or groups.

  • object oriented programming in javascript (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oever ( 233119 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2005 @05:21PM (#12364731) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:object oriented programming in javascript (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Oh yes, JS is actually a *really* cool language, right up there with the "academic" languages. In fact it's very much like Self, which is a prototype-based language. A single concept implemented cleanly from top to bottom.

      Somewhere on there net there's a JS program which makes JS work like Ruby (blocks, iterators, etc).

      Too bad JS is trapped in the browser like that, having to deal with the outside world via DOMs and documents and junk like that.

    • Use the library that Rails uses. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Paradox ( 13555 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2005 @08:02PM (#12366541) Homepage Journal
      It's called Prototype, and it's available right here. [conio.net]

      It's very well written, gets a lot of maintenance, and even has some eye candy as a bonus.
      • Thanks for the pointer. The single js file in the project has some useful classes. Unfortunately, there's no documentation of what these classes should do at all. This makes it very timeconsuming to even find out if what you want is in there, let alone find out how to use it.

        • Prototype needs docmentation badly. Probably the best way for you to learn it is to email the author and ask for some pointers.

          You can also go to some Ajax-Enabled rails sites and see their source.

          It's unfortunate, but that's just the way a lot of web development is these days. People just don't document they way they do in other circles.

  • AJAX makes more sense with Nevow (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check the Python web framework from www.nevow.org [nevow.org] (requires Twisted [twistedmatrix.com]. It makes much more sense to implement Nevow's LivePage (which is basically the same thing as so-called AJAX approach) with Twisted Python webapps -- Twisted webapp is created once and then, runs non-stop at the server side. PHP scripts are executed on each request (so, objects are created every time you click anywhere), this gives you less possibilities of exploiting "live web page" approach.

    Or, in other words: if you want your web pages

  • Why PHP? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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. ;-)
  • I had to go to the fellow's blog to find the slides... http://blog.joshuaeichorn.com/slides/Building_Rich _Web_Applications_With_AJAX/ [joshuaeichorn.com]. Kind of buried the lead there...

    And so, a month from now, I can watch the presentation? Hmm, Let me add that to my calendar [kcoyle.net]. Why so far in advance?
  • I've been using this technique for years - since 1998 I believe. The first application that I used it on was a kiosk. The kiosk application was done using IE and some ActiveX controls to read magcard from a reader and print to a serial port. Well, every time the page loaded, these ActiveX controls would take an eternity to init the serials ports and so on. So I put all that code into another hidden frame and used this hidden frame to control the display frame. Works great.

    • Re:Doing this for years now (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've been using this technique for years - since 1998 I believe. The first application that I used it on was a kiosk. The kiosk application was done using IE and some ActiveX controls to read magcard from a reader and print to a serial port. Well, every time the page loaded, these ActiveX controls would take an eternity to init the serials ports and so on. So I put all that code into another hidden frame and used this hidden frame to control the display frame. Works great.

      So except for the lack of XML or

    • Agreed... You can use callback IFRAMES to generate a lot of the same functionality as AJAX. You don't actually need the XML results to do the work, hidden iframes work just as well. They can also be more flexible, since you can embed javascript in the hidden frame to make a callback to the parent. The only down side is if the user is too "click-happy". You may not have time to load the hidden iframe's page...

      I don't know exactly if/how AJAX style XML requests get around this.
  • 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.

    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 toolkit
    • For the love of all that's holy and good can we please stop calling it Ajax?


      The fact that you're even saying this in response to a slashdot article posting means it's far too late.

      Roll with it. It's not so bad a name.
      • I guess that's a good a point as any :)

        it's just frustrating when people come out with all of these "toolkits" for this and that and do the overnight expert thing for tech that's pretty damned old anyway. ahhhh well.

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