Chapter 6. Sending Data with Ajax

The term Ajax was coined by Jesse James Garrett in 2005 as an acronym standing for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Since then it has come to represent many different things, as the term encompasses a group of related capabilities and techniques. At its most basic level, an Ajax solution includes the following technologies:

• JavaScript, to capture interactions with the user or other browser-related events

• The XMLHttpRequest object, which allows requests to be made to the server without interrupting other browser tasks

• A file on the server, presenting text in a data format such as XML, HTML, or JSON

• More JavaScript, to interpret the data from the server and present it on the page

Ajax has been hailed as the savior of the web landscape, transforming static web pages into interactive web applications. Many frameworks have sprung up to assist developers in taming it, because of the inconsistencies in the browsers' implementations of the XMLHttpRequest object; jQuery...