PHP and DOM

In Chapter 2, you read data asynchronously from the server. While the mechanism is pretty standard and you will use the same routines many times in this book, what’s unusual is that the data passed back from the server was a static file (either text or XML).

In most real-world situations, you will need the server to do some processing, and generate some dynamic output. In this book, we will use PHP to do the server-side part of the job. If your background in PHP isn’t strong, an online search for “php tutorial” will generate lots of interesting resources, including the official PHP tutorial at http://php.net/tut.php. If you enjoy learning by practicing, you may want to check out one of Cristian Darie and Mihai Bucica’s e-commerce books, such as Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional.

You can even use the Suggest and Autocomplete application that you will build in Chapter 6, which finds the help page of the PHP functions for you. You will find the application...