AJAX

Content
v Basic objects necessary
v Setting up the XMLHttpRequest object
v Making the call
v How the server responds
v Using the reply
v XML basics
The usual way we operate in the Web
v Typical browsing behaviour consists of loading a web page,
then selecting some action that we want to do, filling out a
form, submitting the information, etc.

v We work in this sequential manner, requesting one page at

a time, and have to wait for the server to respond, loading
a whole new web page before we continue.

v This is also one of the limitations of web pages, where

transmitting information between a client and server
generally requires a new page to be loaded.

v JavaScript is one way to cut down on (some of) the client-

server response time, by using it to verify form (or other)
information before it’s submitted to a server.
The usual way we operate in the Web
v One of the limitations of JavaScript is (or used to
be) that there was no way to communicate
directly with a web server.

v Another drawback to this usual sequential access

method is that there are many situations where
you load a new page that shares lots of the same
parts as the old (consider the case where you have
a “menu bar” on the top or side of the page that
doesn’t change from page to page).
Things change…
v Until recently, we didn’t have any alternative to this
load/wait/respond method of web browsing.

v Ajax (sometimes written AJAX) is a means of using JavaScript to

communicate with a web server without submitting a form or
loading a new page.

v Ajax makes use of a built-in object, XMLHttpRequest, to perform

this function.

v This object is not yet part of the DOM (Document Object Model)
standard, but is supported (in different fashions) by Firefox,
Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, and other popular browsers.

v The term “Ajax” was coined in 2005, but the XMLHttpRequest

object was first supported by Internet Explorer several years
before this.
Ajax
v Ajax stands for “Asynchronous JavaScript and XML”.
v The word “asynchronous” means that the user isn’t
left waiting for the server the respond to a request,
but can continue using the web page.
v The typical method for using Ajax is the following:
§ 1) A JavaScript creates an XMLHttpRequest object,
initializes it with relevant information as necessary, and
sends it to the server. The script (or web page) can
continue after sending it to the server.
§ 2) The server responds by sending the contents of a file or
the output of a server side program (written, for example,
in PHP).
§ 3) When the response arrives from the server, a JavaScript
function is triggered to act on the data supplied by the
server.
§ 4) This JavaScript response function typically refreshes the
display using the DOM, avoiding the requirement to reload
or refresh the entire page.
The Back End
v The part of the Ajax application that resides on the web
server is referred to as the “back end”.
v This back end could be simply a file that the server passes
back to the client, which is then displayed for the user.
v Alternatively, the back end could be a program, written in
PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, C, or some other language that
performs an operation and sends results back to the client
browser.
v An XMLHttpRequest object can send information using the
GET and POST methods to the server in the same way that
an HTML form sends information.
v Recall from our previous discussions that the GET request
encodes the information inside of the URL, while a POST
request sends its data separately (and can contain more
information than a GET request can).
Writing an Ajax application
v We have to write the “front end” of the application in JavaScript to
initiate the request.
v The back end, as mentioned, processes the request and sends it’s
response back to the client. The back end is typically a short program
we write for performing some dedicated task. This could be scripted
in any language that is capable of sending back communication to the
browser, like PHP or Perl.
v We also need to write the JavaScript response function for processing
the response and displaying any results (or alterations to the web
page).
v The “x” in Ajax stands for XML, the extensible markup language. XML
looks like HTML, which is no mistake as the latest versions of HTML are
built upon XML. The back end could send data back in XML format and
the JavaScript response function can process it using built-in functions
for working with XML. The back end could also send plain text, HTML,
or even data in the JavaScript format.
The XMLHttpRequest object
v The XMLHttpRequest object is the backbone of every Ajax
method. Each application requires the creation of one of
these objects. So how do we do it?

v As with most things in web programming, this depends

upon the web browser that the client is using because of
the different ways in which the object has been
implemented in the browsers.

v Firefox, Safari, Opera, and some other browsers can create

one of these objects simply using the “new” keyword.
<script type="text/javascript">
ajaxRequest = new XMLHttpRequest();
</script>
The XMLHttpRequest object (cont.)
v Microsoft Internet Explorer implements this object using its
proprietary ActiveX technology. This requires a different syntax
for creating the object (and can also depend upon the particular
version of Internet Explorer being used).
v To handle different types of browsers, we use the
try { . . . } catch (error) { . . . }
v The “try” section attempts to execute some JavaScipt code. If
an error occurs, the “catch” section is used to intervene before
the error crashes the JavaScript (either to indicate an error has
happened, or to attempt something else).
v To create one of these objects we can use a sequence of try. . .
catch blocks, attempting different ways to create an
XMLHttpRequest object.
The XMLHttpRequest object (cont.)
function getXMLHttpRequest()
/* This function attempts to get an Ajax request object by trying
a few different methods for different browsers. */
{
var request, err;
try {
request = new XMLHttpRequest(); // Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.
}
catch(err) {
try { // first attempt for Internet Explorer
request = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.XMLHttp.6.0");
}
catch (err) {
try { // second attempt for Internet Explorer
request = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.XMLHttp.3.0");
}
catch (err) {
request = false; // oops, can’t create one!
}
}
}
return request;
}
The XMLHttpRequest object (cont.)
v As with any object in JavaScript (and other programming
languages), the XMLHttpRequest object contains various
properties and methods.

v We list the most important of these properties and methods on

the next slides.

v The main idea is that the properties are set after the object is
created to specify information to be sent to the server, as well
as how to handle the response received from the server. Some
properties will be updated to hold status information about
whether the request finished successfully.

v The methods are used to send the request to the server, and to
monitor the progress of the request as it is executed (and to
determine if it was completed successfully).
XMLHttpRequest object properties
Property Description
v readyState An integer from 0. . .4. (0 means the call
is uninitialized, 4 means that the call is
complete)
v onreadystatechange Determines the function called when the
objects readyState changes.
v responseText Data returned from the server as a text
string (read-only).
v responseXML Data returned from the server as an XML
document object (read-only).
v status HTTP status code returned by the server
v statusText HTTP status phrase returned by the server

We use the readyState to determine when the request has been

completed, and then check the status to see if it executed without an
error. (We’ll see how to do this shortly.)
XMLHttpRequest object methods
Method Description
v open('method', 'URL', asyn) Specifies the HTTP method to be used (GET
or POST as a string, the target URL, and
whether or not the request should be
handled asynchronously (asyn should be
true or false, if omitted, true is
assumed).
v send(content) Sends the data for a POST request and
starts the request, if GET is used you should call send(null).
v setRequestHeader('x','y’) Sets a parameter and value pair x=y and
assigns it to the header to be sent with the request.
v getAllResponseHeaders() Returns all headers as a string.
v getResponseHeader(x) Returns header x as a string.
v abort() Stops the current operation.

The open object method is used to set up the request, and the send method starts
the request by sending it to the server (with data for the server if the POST
method is used).
A general skeleton for an Ajax application
<script type="text/javascript">
// ***** include the getXMLHttpRequest function defined before
var ajaxRequest = getXMLHttpRequest();
if (ajaxRequest) { // if the object was created successfully
ajaxRequest.onreadystatechange = ajaxResponse;
ajaxRequest.open("GET", "search.php?query=Bob");
ajaxRequest.send(null);
}
function ajaxResponse() //This gets called when the readyState changes.
{
if (ajaxRequest.readyState != 4) // check to see if we’re done
{ return; }
else {
if (ajaxRequest.status == 200) // check to see if successful
{ // process server data here. . . }
else {
alert("Request failed: " + ajaxRequest.statusText);
}
}
}
</script>
A first example
v Here’s an example to illustrate the ideas we’ve mentioned (inspired by
an example in the book Ajax in 10 Minutes by Phil Ballard).
v The main idea is that we’re going to get the time on the server and
display it to the screen (and provide a button for a user to update this
time). The point I want to demonstrate here is how to use Ajax to do
this update without updating/refreshing the entire webpage.

v We use a (very) small PHP script to get the date from the server, and
return it as a string as a response to the request. Here is the script:

<?php
echo date('H:i:s');
?>

v I saved this as the file “telltime.php”.

v The HTML file and JavaScript code follows.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN”
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>Ajax Demonstration</title>
<style>
body {
background-color: #CCCCCC;
text-align: center;
}
.displaybox {
margin: auto;
width: 150px;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
border: 2px solid #000000;
padding: 10px;
font: 1.5em normal verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
var ajaxRequest;
function getXMLHttpRequest()
/* This function attempts to get an Ajax request object by try in
a few different methods for different browsers. */
{ // same code as before. . .
}
function ajaxResponse() //This gets called when the readyState changes.
{
if (ajaxRequest.readyState != 4) // check to see if we're done
{ return; }
else {
if (ajaxRequest.status == 200) // check to see if successful
{
document.getElementById("showtime").innerHTML =
ajaxRequest.responseText; }
else {
alert("Request failed: " + ajaxRequest.statusText);
}
}
}
function getServerTime() // The main JavaScript for calling the
update.
{
ajaxRequest = getXMLHttpRequest();
if (!ajaxRequest) {
document.getElementById("showtime").innerHTML = "Request
error!";
return; }
var myURL = "telltime.php";
var myRand = parseInt(Math.random()*999999999999999);
myURL = myURL + "?rand=" + myRand;
ajaxRequest.onreadystatechange = ajaxResponse;
ajaxRequest.open("GET", myURL);
ajaxRequest.send(null);
}
</script>
</head>
 <body onload="getServerTime();">
<h1>Ajax Demonstration</h1>

<h2>Getting the server time without refreshing

the page</h2>

<form>
<input type="button" value="Get Server Time"
onclick="getServerTime();" />
</form>
<div id="showtime" class="displaybox"></div>

</body>
</html>
view the output page

The main functionality is handled by the getServerTime()

function in setting up and sending the XMLHttpRequest
object, and the ajaxResponse() function to display the time.
What’s this business with the random numbers?
v Web browsers use caches to store copies of the web page.
Depending upon how they are set up, a browser could use
data from its cache instead of making a request to the web
server.

v The whole point of Ajax is to make server requests and not

to read data from the cache. To avoid this potential
problem, we can add a parameter with a random string to
the URL so that the browser won’t be reading data from its
cache to satisfy the request (as then it looks like a different
request than previous ones).

v This is only necessary if the request method is GET, as

POST requests don’t use the cache. (This also seems to be
more of an issue with Microsoft Internet Explorer than
with other browsers.)
Sending text back the server
v The response stored in XMLHttpRequest.responseText from the server can be
any text that JavaScript is capable of processing as a string.

v Thus, you can send back a simple text string as the first example did, or you
could send a string with HTML tags embedded in it. You can process the string
using JavaScript functions (to split it into substrings, add/delete parts of it,
etc.).

v You could even send back a string that has JavaScript code it in and execute it
using the JavaScript eval() method.

v Recall, however, that the responseText property is a read-only variable, so if

you’re going to alter it you must first copy it to another variable.

Example with HTML tag (Change the PHP script to insert HTML tags.)

Example using a table (As above, change the PHP script.)

The other PHP scripts for the time examples
Here’s the script with a simple HTML tag in it.
<?php
echo '<span style="color: red;">' . date('H:i:s') . "</span>";
?>

The output with a table.

<?php
$tr = '<tr style="border: 2px solid;">';
$td = '<td style="border: 2px solid">';
$table = '<table style="border: 2px solid; margin: auto;">';
$table .= $tr . $td . date('j M Y') . '</td></tr>';
$table .= $tr . $td . date('H:i:s') . '</td></tr>';
$table .= '</table>';
echo $table;
?>
XML: a (very) brief intro (again and again)
v XML, the eXtensible Markup Language, is used in
many ways, the most relevant to us being the transfer
of structured information.

v XML and HTML look similar in many ways and this is

because both are based on SGML, the Standard
Generalized Markup Language established by the
International Organization for Standards (ISO).

v Like HTML, XML uses tags to denote information but is

not limited to the types of tags that occur in HTML.
Tags can be essentially anything a user likes and are
used to define the type of data present in the
document.
XML: a (very) brief intro (cont.) (and again)
Here’s an example:
<library>
<book>
<title>Programming PHP</title>
<author>Rasmus Lerdorf</author>
<author>Kevin Tatroe</author>
<author>Peter MacIntyre</author>
<chapter number="1">Introduction to
PHP</chapter>
<chapter number="2">Language Basics</chapter>
. . .
<pages>521</pages>
</book>
. . .
</library>
Accessing an XML document in JavaScript
v To use an XML document in JavaScript, you must create an object to hold it. This
can be done in the following fashion:
v Non-Microsoft browsers:
<script>
var myXMLDoc =
document.implementation.createDocument("","",null);
myXMLDoc.load("mydoc.xml");
// other code here
</script>
v Internet Explorer:
<script>
var myXMLDoc = new
ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM");
myXMLDoc.async="false";
myXMLDoc.load("mydoc.xml");
// other code here
</script>
v Once we’ve created the object holding the XML document, we can then use
JavaScript methods to examine it, extract data from it, etc.
The “time” example using XML
v The first change is to make a new PHP script that returns an XML
document to the browser.
<?php
header('Content-Type: text/xml');
echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\" ?>\n";
echo "<clock><timenow>" .
date('H:i:s') .
"</timenow></clock>";
?>

v After that change (and inserting the new script name into the HTML
code), we need to alter the ajaxResponse function to parse the XML
document. That new JavaScript function is given on the next slide.
v Note that we need not explicitly create an object to hold the XML
document, but that responseXML (as a property of XMLHttpRequest)
is already such an object.
The new Ajax response function
function ajaxResponse() //This gets called when the readyState changes.
{
if (ajaxRequest.readyState != 4) // check to see if we're done
{ return; }
else {
if (ajaxRequest.status == 200) // check to see if successful
{ var timeValue = ajaxRequest.responseXML.
getElementsByTagName("timenow")[0];
document.getElementById("showtime").innerHTML =
timeValue.childNodes[0].nodeValue; }
else {
alert("Request failed: " + ajaxRequest.statusText);
}
}
}
v This new response function uses a JavaScript method to access the XML DOM and
retrieve the time string before inserting it into the output display box.

view the output page

A second example (live search)
v We’ll build a “live search” function. When you typically use a
form, you must submit the data to the server and wait for it to
return the results. Here we want to consider a case where you
get (partial) results as you enter data into the input field, and
that these results are updated (almost) instantly.
v Note: This example has been adapted from the book JavaScript
in 24 Hours by Michael Moncur.
v We use PHP again for the backend. First consider the case
where the possible results are a list of names, stored in a PHP
array. As you type data into the input field, it’s matched against
this list of names, and the (partial) matches are returned and
displayed on screen.
v Later, we will see the same type of application, but using PHP to
search through the names stored in a database.
The HTML layout (no JavaScript yet)
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

<head>
<title>Ajax Demonstration</title>
<style>
</style>

<script>
// The JavaScript front end will be in here.
</script>

<body>
<h1>Ajax Demonstration of Live Search</h1>
<p>
Search for: <input type="text" id="searchstring" />
</p>
<div id="results">
<ul id="list">
<li>Results will be displayed here.</li>
</ul>
</div>

<script type="text/javascript"> // This sets up the event handler to start the

// search function.
// var obj=document.getElementById("searchstring");
// obj.onkeydown = startSearch;
</script>
</body> view the output page
</html>
The PHP backend
<?php
header("Content-Type: text/xml");
$people = array( "Abraham Lincoln", "Martin Luther King", "Jimi Hendrix", "John Wayne", "John
Carpenter", "Elizabeth Shue", "Benny Hill",
"Lou Costello", "Bud Abbott", "Albert Einstein", "Rich Hall",
"Anthony Soprano", "Michelle Rodriguez", "Carmen Miranda",
"Sandra Bullock", "Moe Howard", "Ulysses S. Grant", "Stephen Fry",
"Kurt Vonnegut", "Yosemite Sam", "Ed Norton", "George Armstrong Custer", "Alice Kramden",
"Evangeline Lilly", "Harlan Ellison");
if(!$query) $query = $_GET['query'];
echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\"?>\n";
echo "<names>\n";
while (list($k,$v) = each ($people))
{
if (stristr ($v, $query))
echo "<name>$v</name>\n";
}
echo '</names>';
?>

v This PHP script takes the query that will be passed to it, then searches for (case insensitive)
matches to the names in the array.
v It passes an XML document back to the calling function consisting of the names that it finds.
The JavaScript functions
v We obviously need the function for creating a new XMLHttpRequest
object, which we will store in a global variable called “ajaxRequest”.
v The search will be handled by setting up a Timeout event, based on
entering text in the input field (using the “onkeydown” attribute).
var t; // public variable for the timeout
function startSearch()
{
if (t) window.clearTimeout(t);
t = window.setTimeout("liveSearch()",200);
}
v The “liveSearch” function is the main calling routine, where we set up
the XMLHttpRequest object, and make the call to the PHP script.
The JavaScript functions (cont.)
Recall that we’re making ajaxRequest a global variable in the script, so
that as in the other example we can access it’s properties in the
callback function.

function liveSearch()
{
ajaxRequest = getXMLHttpRequest();
if (!ajaxRequest) alert("Request error!");
var myURL = "search.php";
var query = document.getElementById("searchstring").value;
myURL = myURL + "?query=" + query;
ajaxRequest.onreadystatechange = ajaxResponse;
ajaxRequest.open("GET", myURL);
ajaxRequest.send(null);
}

function ajaxResponse() //This gets called when the readyState changes.

{
if (ajaxRequest.readyState != 4) // check to see if we're done
{ return; }
else {
if (ajaxRequest.status == 200) // check to see if successful
{ displaySearchResults(); }
else {
alert("Request failed: " + ajaxRequest.statusText);
}
}
}
The JavaScript functions (cont.)
function displaySearchResults()
// This function will display the search results, and is the
// callback function for the Ajax request.
{ var i, n, li, t;
var ul = document.getElementById("list");
var div = document.getElementById("results");

div.removeChild(ul); // delete the old search results

ul = document.createElement("UL"); // create a new list container
ul.id="list";

// var naget the results from the search request object

names=ajaxRequest.responseXML.getElementsByTagName("name");
for (i = 0; i < names.length; i++)
{
li = document.createElement("LI"); // create a new list element
n = names[i].firstChild.nodeValue;
t = document.createTextNode(n);
li.appendChild(t);
ul.appendChild(li);
}
if (names.length == 0) { // if no results are found, say so
li = document.createElement("LI");
li.appendChild(document.createTextNode("No results."));
ul.appendChild(li);
}
div.appendChild(ul); // display the new list
}
The finished product
v We add all of the functions (and the two global
variables) to the header script section,
uncomment the two lines in the other script
section and we’re good to go!

v The fact that the names are in a PHP script allows

us to easily add more or delete some of them. If
desired, you could have the “search array” in a
separate PHP file and include it in the search
routine script, allowing you to reuse the same
code with many different lists.

view the output page

Using a database for the live search
v Instead of storing the names in an array, we could
alter the PHP script to search through a mySQL
database for matches.

v The JavaScript need not be changed (except for

the name of the script to call).

v As before, the PHP script will return the names as

an XML document, using methods for a case-
insensitive search on the query string.

v A new PHP script is shown on the next slide.

<?php
header("Content-Type: text/xml");
echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\"?>\n";
echo "<names>\n";

if(!$query) $query = strtoupper($_GET['query']);

if($query != "")
{
include_once('db_access.php');
$connection = mysql_connect($db_host, $db_username, $db_password);
if(!$connection)
{
exit("Could not connect to the database: <br/>" .
htmlspecialchars(mysql_error));
}
mysql_select_db($db_database);

$select = "SELECT ";

$column = "name ";
$from = "FROM ";
$tables = "people ";
$where = "WHERE ";
$condition = "upper(name) LIKE '%$query%'";

$SQL_query = htmlentities($select . $column . $from . $tables . $where .

$condition);
$result = mysql_query($SQL_query);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result))
{
echo "<name>" . $row[0] . "</name>\n";
}

mysql_close($connection);
}
echo "</names>";
view the output page
?>
Some cautions
v As with any JavaScript element, you can’t (or shouldn’t) rely
upon a user’s browser being able to execute JavaScript (some
people turn it off on their browsers). (Of course, there are
webpages that ignore this caution.)

v Debug carefully and on many different browsers. Ajax uses

features that might not be present in all browsers or they may
not operate in the same fashion.

v If you can, indicate to the user that “something is happening” or

that something has changed on the page, otherwise they may
not notice it.

v Ajax can possibly introduce strange behavior, like the “Back”

button on the browser doesn’t act like it did before (as with any
dynamic website), or that if you use some “hidden” elements in
your page (generated by Ajax), then they will likely not show up
in a form that search engines will recognize.