AJAX Components -  Part 2
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This week you'll go through the steps of building an AJAX DataGrid control, which is used to iterate over a list of JavaScript objects. Other topics covered are the behavior component, databinding, templating and the declaration. By David Johnson, Alexei White, and Andre Charland. 0904
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Cal Evans has posted his notes from the (just passed) Web Builder 2.0 Conference that happened over in Las Vegas. PHP had its presence there through Cal's "PHP Powers Mashups" talk and others like Chris Shiflett.   There was plenty to see and do at the conference besides PHP and Cal highlights just a few:  AJAX Optimization talks  An overview of some Flickr Stats Google's mashup offerings An introduction to  and some talk of benchmarking Ajax  Check out the full post though - it's jam-packed with links and some great event information.
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DevShed continues their series looking at connecting a PHP5 script to the powerful Yahoo! search backend with part four of the series today. This part focuses on reworking some of the previous examples to make them more modular using custom defined functions.   Logically, these examples can be really useful for learning the basic concepts surrounding the use of these search services, but undoubtedly, it's necessary to modify and improve their source code to make it more compact and completely reusable.   They start the overhaul with the web search (complete with example results) then push on to the video and image searches and work them over the same way.
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If you've ever had the frustration of working with Ajax in Internet Explorer and have noticed it caching the requests/results, you might want to check out this new post on the JSLabs blog for a helpful hint.   While working on an AJAX project over the weekend, I ran into the following issue: (through a GET request), every time I tried to call a certain function, It was returning the same data (which was supposed to be different each time)   First, he tried just changing the headers (via PHP's header function) to see if IE would understand the new message, but to no avail. He finally figured out that, despite whatever headers were sent or how much the content changed, what he really needed to do was to provide the script some kind of unique identifier with each request (just appended to the url) so that IE knew the request was different. His weapon of choice was a date/time value.
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On Dotvoid.com, there's a new post that reminds us of two of the more "ajaxified" features of the new releases of PHP 5 (like 5.2) - the JSON extension and the functionality to track file uploads.   These features aren't competing for the heavy weight title in the release notes. Still, having these implemented in PHP makes it a lot easier to develop modern, more responsive, web based applications.   You can get more info on the JSON extension here and an example of the file upload monitor in this entry on the Bitflux blog.
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Continuing on in their series of working with stand alone PHP scripts, DevShed has posted this third and last part looking at the creation of a basic script you can use to monitor your server (an excerpt from Advances PHP Programming by George Schlossnagle).   Last week, we continued our discussion of PHP standalone scripts with child processes and more. This week, we conclude our discussion and bring together what you've learned.   They start with the creation of a very basic daemon, including permission restrictions. They then modify this heavily to support the monitoring of processes through various parameters like frequency, status_time, and a description of the service. They then create the full example script and show the usage by checking to see if a URL passed in can be opened.   They also include, as a bonus, another more useful script that will email someone when the specified service goes down (still a HTTP check, though).
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This week you'll learn about the individual building blocks of Ajax and how they fit together to form the architecture of an Ajax application. Later on these components will be used to create a working Ajax application. By Phil Ballard. 0730
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(InfoWorld) - Looking to bolster AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and development of Web 2.0 applications, the OpenAjax Alliance on Wednesday plans to introduce a project that addresses AJAX interoperability issues. The alliance, which features vendors such as IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems, will roll out its OpenAjax Hub project. This effort involves developing a standard set of JavaScript functionality to tackle problems with interoperability arising when multiple AJAX libraries are used within the same Web page. With the hub, multiple AJAX run-time libraries would be able to coexist on a page. Version 1.0 of the OpenAjax Hub is planned for completion by the end of this calendar year; integration of the hub into AJAX toolkits expected in early 2007. "[In] today's world, AJAX libraries in general believe they own the entire browser [and] JavaScript environment, that they're the first one and the last one, so they assume a consequence-free environment where they can do whatever they want to do," said Jon Ferraiolo, acting director of the alliance and a Web architect in the emerging technologies group at IBM. What results, he said, are collisions of JavaScript objects and the toolkits managing HTML markup, and an inability to integrate functions such as drag and drop events. With development of the hub, the alliance is dealing with its top priority, said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, in an e-mail response to questions. "There is a critical need for OpenAjax at this point in time, because each vendor's AJAX implementation is generally incompatible with the others," Bloomberg said. "Basically, even though each AJAX widget leverages XML and JavaScript, both of which are open standards, that doesn't mean that one widget from one toolkit will work with another widget from some other toolkit. The most important goal of OpenAjax is figuring out how to resolve this interoperability problem. Clearly, Ajax will be far more successful if any widget works with any other widget, toolkit, or platform." Support for the hub is expected in toolkits such as Dojo and script.aculo.us as well as in AJAX frameworks such as Tibco General Interface and offerings from Backbase, JackBe and Nexaweb. "No one has made any commitments [to use the hub yet] but generally, [the parties cited] are all active in the alliance," said Ferraiolo. The unveiling of the hub is part of an update on the alliance's activities that is being provided Wednesday. The group will announce a near-doubling of its membership since its formation in February. New members include The Ajaxian, American Greetings, Bling Software, Curl, edge IPK, eLink Business Innovations, ENOVIA, MatrixOne, Finetooth, The Front Side, Ikivo, ILOG, IN2, IT Mill, Javeline, JWAX, Merced Systems, Nexaweb, Nitobi, OpenLink Software, Seagull Software, Sitepen, Sun, Vertex Logic, Vircon, Webtide, and Zoho. Previously announced members of the alliance include: Adobe, Backbase, BEA Systems, Borland, the Dojo Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Fair Isaac, Google, IBM, ICEsoft, Innoopract, Intel, JackBe, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla Corporation, Novell, Openwave Systems, Opera, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, Scalix, Software AG, Tibco, XML11, Zend, and Zimbra. While the alliance already has an impressive list of members, one name remains conspicuously absent: Microsoft. "Yes, we have extended an invitation and attempted to recruit Microsoft to join," Ferraiolo said. "We would love to have Microsoft participate in the alliance." "The purpose of the alliance is to make interoperability successful such that you can take AJAX technologies from one source and use it with another vendor's. Microsoft is one of [those] vendors and an important vendor in the AJAX community and it would be to everybody's advantage, particularly customers, if Microsoft's products would interoperate well with other people's products," said Ferraiolo. He added he was not making a statement that Microsoft products currently do not interoperate. Although Microsoft has promoted AJAX via its Atlas technologies, Microsoft currently does not have plans to join. "Microsoft has no firm plans to join the OpenAjax Alliance. However, Microsoft is very committed to working with the developer community and is engaged in dialogue with the OpenAjax Alliance organizers to learn more about the initiative," Microsoft said in a prepared statement. The alliance seeks to serve as an industry catalyst to boost AJAX-enabled Web 2.0 applications. Ferraiolo defines Web 2.0 as a new generation of the Web focused on collaboration. OpenAjax technologies are intended to produce lower development costs, faster delivery of applications, vendor choice, interoperability, and a richer Web experience. Greater collaboration capabilities that can be added to existing HTML sites or used for new applications is another goal. Also being unveiled on Wednesday is the organization's Web site and a white paper covering a description of AJAX, the AJAX value proposition and a technical section on AJAX architectures. These architectures include single and dual DOMs (Document Object Model), in which the single model involves processing everything in HTML browsers, while the dual approach involves using an XML parser that holds the description of the UI. The dual model offers a richer set of functionality but requires a larger download, typically, Ferraiolo said. AJAX in the open source world also is being included in the alliance's list of issues to cover. One of the goals for the alliance is the ability to have a zero-cost option, but it's not trying to lock out vendors from making money at all," said Ferraiolo. A second meeting of the alliance is planned for Oct. 5-6 in Santa Clara, Calif. The alliance on Oct. 5 plans to announce it has moved to a formal governance model that includes a steering committee. Goals and procedural issues also will be discussed. Security of AJAX also will be on the agenda, Ferraiolo said.
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Davey Shafik has posted another update on his web services component he's working up for the Zend Framework, the Zend_Service_Server.    I have been working closely with Matthew Weier O'Phinney for the last week on bringing my Zend_Service_Server proposal to fruition.   There have been several changes, but the core has not moved too far. Matthew, Andi and I have decided that we will first implement the different server/client libraries.    He lists the libraries they'll need to tackle first and talks about an "exercise" he did to work up a JSON server component that works in a similar fashion.
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The DeveloperTutorials website has a new tutorial posted today that covers their method for combining Ajax and PHP to create a custom form handler.   For this project, I needed a form to send an email to the client once it's been validated and checked to be ok. [...] I decided to spice things up a bit with a little AJAX and a few effects from Scriptaculous. So let's dive into exactly how I did it.   They create their form first - a standard user info type of thing - and set it up to use the WForms validation script in PHP. They include the Javascript the script needs to run the validation and to handle sending the form's contents back out via an email.
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In this new tutorial from WebReference, they show you how to develop a simple database-enabled Ajax application in PHP.   In this article you'll learn how to create database-enabled Ajax requests using PHP and MySQL. We begin by creating the front-end HTML and JavaScript files used to make requests to the server-side. The requested server-side is a PHP file which bridges the gap between Ajax and a PHP object that connects to a MySQL database and returns results as an XML response to the Ajax engine.   The application is a simple way to enter news postings into a database and pull them back out with this handy Javascript functionality. They also provide the complete source code for download to help you get started.
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Over on our sister site, AjaxDeveloper.org today, there's a note about the latest release of Joshua Eichorn's HTML_AJAX PEAR package - version 0.3.1.    HTML_AJAX 0.3.1 is out, lots of good bug fixes, and iframe fallback support for Opera and IE with activeX turned off.  More details are available on the release notes on the wiki.  Feature wise were getting close to beta release, its mainly getting a browser compatability test suite added in and doing some basic API review. If you have experience supporting an API without breaking bc, it would be great to get your feedback on HTML_AJAX.    In the release notes, there's mention of several bugs with Internet Explorer implementations and some yet unsolved problems (IE memory leaks and table support in Konqueror). Check out the rest of the notes for more of the bugs and issues they've taken care of...
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This week wraps up our section on Object-Oriented JavaScript with a look at prototypes, the JavaScript execution context, var x, this.x, and x, inheritance using closures and prototypes and more. By Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea. 1029
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Damien Seguy has continued his series looking at PHP configurations around the web and is sharing the results in the form of two new reports over on Nexen.net.   I just published the second part of the serie about PHP configurations. This part focuses on three aspects of PHP: PHP extensions, PHP streams, and disabled functions.   You can find the statistics themselves here and the latest configuration statistics here. It's interesting to see the drop-off when it comes to the various modules that are installed ("php, ftp and http are the most common. Besides them, tough luck.") and to see the somewhat more gradual curve of which functions are disabled - with system() topping out the list (with good reason).
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On the PHP-Learn-it.com website, there's a new tutorial today about taking those first steps into combining PHP and Ajax to make a simple working example.   This simple tutorial demonstrates how to post a form using PHP and AJAX without having to refresh the page. A first step in becoming an AJAX developer.   They chose to go with the prototype Javascript library to use its included Ajax functionality. They give the complete code first then go back and explain the different parts - how it makes the request, shows the response back from the PHp script and what the PHP script actually does.
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On PHPied.com, there's a new tutorial that combines the power of Ajax with the flexibility of PHP to create a more Ajax-centric version of an Model/View/Controller structure.    This is sort of a framework thing to create AJAX applications, based on the MVC design pattern. Yep, I have a lot of buzzwords here, I admit, but this shouldn't be taken too seriously. I was doing a bunch of small projects lately and I found myself using something like this little framework, without even thinking about it.    Then I thought about it and I found that the scripts and the organization of them may resamble MVC a bit. So how does MVC fit when you mix things like thin and fatter client, HTML, JavaScript, XMLHttpRequest, PHP and CSS?    He compares the "usual flow" of Ajax applications verus how an MVC-like app would work and shows a simple version of one in action. It uses PHP for the Model, Javascript/PHP for the Controller logic, and strictly HTML/CSS/Javascript for the View to output to the user. He incorporates some of the Yahoo! UI functionality to help capture events and make the backend Ajax connection. His sample sends off an Ajax request to the PHP backend when the button is pressed and takes in the message (HTML) and pushed it back out into the current page.   The demo is here and you can download the source as well.
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Microsoft on Monday officially gave a name to its new AJAX technologies formerly known as "Atlas." Atlas is being split into three distinct products, with the server-side functionality now dubbed: ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions.