Beginning Ajax with PHP: From Novice to Professional by Lee Babin

An interesting misconception regarding Ajax is that, given all the cool features it has to offer, the JavaScript code must be extremely difficult to implement and maintain. The truth is, however, that beginning your experimentation with the technology could not be simpler. The structure of an Ajax-based server request is quite easy to understand and invoke. You must simply create an object of the XMLHttpRequest type, validate that it has been created successfully, point where it will go an where the result will be displayed,
and then send it. That’s really all there is to it.
If that’s all there is to it, then why is it causing such a fussll of a sudden? It’s because Ajax is less about the code required to make it happen and more about what’s possible from a functionality, ergonomics, and interface perspective. The fact that Ajax is rather simple to implement from a development point of view is merely icing on a very fine cake. It allows developers to stop worrying about making the code work, and instead
concentrate on imagining what might be possible when putting the concept to work.
While Ajax can be used for very simple purposes such as loading HTML pages or performing
mundane tasks such as form validation, its power becomes apparent when used in conjunction with a powerful server-side scripting language. As might be implied by this book’s title, the scripting language I’ll be discussing is PHP. When mixing a clientside interactive concept such as Ajax with a server-side powerhouse such as PHP, amazing applications can be born. The sky is the limit when these two come together, and throughout this book I’ll show you how they can be mixed for incredibly powerful results.
In order to begin making use of Ajax and PHP to create web applications, you must first gain a firm understanding of the basics. It should be noted that Ajax is a JavaScript tool, and so learning the basics of JavaScript will be quite important when attempting to understand Ajax-type applications. Let’s begin with the basics.

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