Intro: Introduction to Ajax for PHP Web Applications

This document provides an introduction to Ajax and demonstrates some of the features in the NetBeans IDE that allow you to program faster and more efficiently when working with Ajax-related technologies. While learning about the low-level functionality of Ajax, you build a simple application that employs auto-completion in a text field. Content here has been adapted from Greg Murray's article and sample application from Using Ajax with Java Technology.

Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. In essence, Ajax is an efficient way for a web application to handle user interactions with a web page -- a way that reduces the need to do a page refresh or full page reload for every user interaction. This enables rich behavior (similar to that of a desktop application or plugin-based web application) using a browser. Ajax interactions are handled asynchronously in the background. As this happens, a user can continue working with the page. Ajax interactions are initiated by JavaScript code. When the Ajax interaction is complete, JavaScript updates the HTML source of the page. The changes are made immediately without requiring a page refresh. Ajax interactions can be used to do things such as validate form entries (while the user is entering them) using server-side logic, retrieve detailed data from the server, dynamically update data on a page, and submit partial forms from the page.

The NetBeans IDE provides strong support for Ajax development, including JavaScript and CSS editors, an all new PHP editor, a JavaScript debugger which is based on the Firebug plugin for Firefox, a client-side monitor to examine HTTP messages, an Ajax-ready environment for your choice of server-side scripting language (e.g., JSP, PHP, Ruby, Groovy), out-of-the-box support for MySQL and Java DB, and extensive integration support for web frameworks and third-party JavaScript toolkits...

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Courtesy:- http://www.netbeans.org/