Head Rush Ajax

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Appendix I

#1: Ajax toolkits

We’ve talked a few times about using an Ajax “toolkit” to handle repetitive

tasks like creating a request object or sending a request. Once you

understand how to write this code yourself, you may want to look into a few

of these toolkits and see if they offer any functionality you might to take

advantage of. Here are a few of the most popular toolkits:

ajax toolkits

You’ll also see these

toolkits referred to

as “frameworks”. Don’t

worry... it’s all pretty

much the same thing.

Prototype

Where to get it: http://prototype.conio.net/

How to use it:

<head>

<title>The New and Improved Break Neck Pizza</title>

<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”breakneck.css” />

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”prototype.js”> </script>

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”pizza.js”> </script>

</head>

Just reference the prototype.js le

you download from the Prototype

web site in your HTML.

Sending a request:

var request = new Ajax.Request(

url,

{

method: ‘get’,

parameters: ‘phone=2142908762&name=Mary’,

onSuccess: updatePage,

onFailure: reportError

}

Ajax.Request is the Prototype JavaScript

class that handles Ajax requests.

url is the URL to send the request to.

This can be either

“get” or “post”.

Here are your name/value

pairs that are sent to the

server-side program.

Here’s one of the nicer features of

Prototype: you can set up separate

functions to handle different ...