Re: Ajax via RSP/CGIDEV2

["Walden H. Leverich" <WaldenL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

One of the things that has amazed me about all these Ajax posts is that
everyone is writing (or attempting to write) the client-side javascript
code themselves. WHY? 

There are many script libraries out there that have written the code
(and tested it against many browsers) making it much more elegant, and
simpler to program. Why are people reinventing the wheel? I'm partial to
prototype from http://prototype.conio.net but use what you like.

For example. Say you wanted to update a div tag with the result from a
Ajax call to the server. Simple include the prototype.js file in your
HEAD code via:

<script src="/js/prototype.js"></script>

And then the COMPLETE js you need to write would be:

new Ajax.Updater("ID-Of-Div", "/URL/Of/Page");


That's it! One line! The Updater method will handle creating the
XMLHTTPRequest object as needed by the browser, create the callback
functions for the object, launch the request, process the response and
update the innerHTML of the div with the specified id. 

Not only is it simpler to code, but it's significantly less code to send
over the pipe to the client.

-Walden