Beginning ASP.NET for Visual Studio 2015

Chapter 13ASP.NET AJAX

What you will learn in this chapter:

• How AJAX fits into the ASP.NET Framework
• Taking advantage of Web Forms controls to make AJAX calls
• Using a Web Forms control to show status to the user
• Creating REST web services to support AJAX
• Using jQuery to support AJAX in MVC

Code Downloads for this Chapter:

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wrox.com/go/beginningaspnetforvisualstudio on the Download Code tab. The code is in the chapter 13 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

When you are talking about web development and you hear the term AJAX, it is very rarely referring to the hero from Greek mythology. Instead, it refers to a web communications approach that started to become popular in 2005 and 2006, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. The primary purpose of AJAX is to enable communications between the user's browser and the server without having to do a full page refresh.

This communication is not outside the HTTP protocol, but instead uses HTTP to communicate smaller pieces of information within sections of the web page, rather than the default “whole page” approach. This is becoming increasingly common, as it provides an experience that seems more desktop-like because pieces of information on the page are refreshed based on some condition (timing, user action, and so on) without having to go through the whole page fetch that prevents users from being able to work in the browser while the ...