《AJAX.JSON_Riecken》.pdf

AJAX and JSON – Lessons Learned Jim Riecken, Senior Software Engineer, Blackboard® Inc. About Me • Jim Riecken • Senior Software Engineer • At Blackboard for 4 years. • Work out of the Vancouver office. • Working a lot with User Interface components of Blackboard LearnTM . – Lots of JavaScript, CSS, JSP, Tag Libraries About this presentation • Goals – Quickly introduce AJAX and JSON. – Describe the approaches we’ve taken for implementing asynchronous behavior in Blackboard Learn. – Share some experiences and lessons we’ve learned in the following areas:areas: • Performance • Security • Accessibility – Show “real-life” examples wherever possible from Blackboard Learn. Quick Introduction to AJAX and JSONQuick Introduction to AJAX and JSON What is AJAX? • Asynchronous JavaScript And XML – Buzzword – Don’t have to use XML. – Really just an asynchronous HTTP request. • Browser doesn’t refresh the page. –– ServerServer--side, it’s just a normal HTTP request.side, it’s just a normal HTTP request. – Done via the XMLHttpRequest object built into modern browsers. • Various libraries are available that hide minor browser differences in how AJAX requests are constructed. • E.g. Prototype’s Ajax.Request object, Direct Web Remoting (DWR) new Ajax.Request( “/some/url”, { method: ‘get’, parameters: { param1: ‘value1’, param2: ‘value2’ }, onSuccess: function( req ) { alert( req.responseText ); } }); AJAX vs. Non-AJAX “Regular” Request AJAX Request Why use AJAX? • Helps your application become: – More “Desktop”-like • Dra