Evan Harmon - Memex

Ajax (programming)

Ajax (also AJAX ; short for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML" or "Asynchronous JavaScript transfer is a set of web development techniques that uses various web technologies on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications. With Ajax, web applications can send and retrieve data from a server asynchronously without interfering with the display and behaviour of the existing page. By decoupling the data interchange layer from the presentation layer, Ajax allows web pages and, by extension, web applications, to change content dynamically without the need to reload the entire page. In practice, modern implementations commonly utilize JSON instead of XML.
wikipedia:: Ajax (programming)
  • “Asynchronous Javascript And XML” but mostly now with JSON instead of XML which would technically be ASJJ
  • A variety of popular JavaScript libraries, including JQuery, include abstractions to assist in executing Ajax requests.
  • Mostly client-side
  • Usually targeting some container to do something to it.
  • Can call to your own server or a third party server via an API e.g.

AHAH

Asynchronous

  • Allows a webpage to be updated/changed without the browser needing to reload the entire page

jQuery Ways of doing AJAX

  • The popular JavaScript library jQuery has implemented abstractions which enable developers to use Ajax more conveniently. Although it still uses XMLHttpRequest behind the scenes
    • Get Method
  • jQuery.get
  • jQuery.ajax
Ajax (programming)
Interactive graph
On this page
Ajax (programming)
AHAH
Asynchronous
XMLHttpRequest
jQuery Ways of doing AJAX