SourceForge Project | Download DomAxh!
This site loads all its content through Ajax, so the following text is placed here for google to find and index: Ajax for Dommies! Who is this for? If you have a project that requires that your clients request and recieve pieces of content in specific parts of a web application or web page without reloading the page. This is also interesting for you if you have an existing web project and you want to "Ajaxify" it without having to rewrite a bunch of code or going deep into Json's realm. What is DomAxh? Simply put, it's a script that parses XHTML parting from a XMLResponse object. Why is this important? Actually its revolutionary, and it will probably be one of the most important scripts that will allow the masses to add Web 2.0 behaviour to their web sites and applications. Why? Because it lets you write your ajax responses in plain valid XHTML, including css and javascript inclusions, imbedded scripts, images, etc. How does it achieve this? Basically, you just send your ajax request using your favorite handler, you can use prototype.js's for example. Then you set up your server's script so that it returns valid XHTML (just as if it where a web page but only with the piece of code you wish to display... a div, news results, etc.). This is where the magic starts because when you recieve the XMLRespose, all you have to do is pass it to DomAxh and tell it where to insert/update the new html and that's it! DomAxh takes the XML object and translates it to HTML, and inerts/replaces it where ever you told it to. Whats the impact on the average developer? Basically he can continue to write his layout and user interface in plain 'ol html. He can also continue to have most of the logic of his application running on the server side and with his language of choice instead of having to deal with so much tricky cross browser javascripting for anyone to see and (possibly) tamper with. Yeah right! Proove it. Well thats easy, just take a look at the source code of this page, and you will realize just how simple it was to create this slide show: Additionally you can load html with css and complex javascript. We can dynamically load the stuff we need to create a floating window all from the server. So where are we at? DomAXh is still in development stage, but its being used in full fledge real applications today. Who originally wrote DomAxh? The code for DomAxh was developed by Thomas Woodard as part of his work for the MinCI (Ministry of Communications of Venezuela), and released as Open Source at SourceForge.net