What is this course about?
AJAX is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, and a convenient name given to the set of technologies that make it possible to develop asynchronous client-slide applications.
AJAX allows HTTP requests to be made from within JavaScript and therefore update the contents of a page with the new requested page, all asynchronously. This means that page refreshes can be made without the need to reload the page. AJAX enables what we call refresh without a reload. AJAX is a client-side masterpiece and developing applications in it is a concern of many emerging websites.
It is important to realise the fact that AJAX isn't a programming language, neither a framework, nor a library. It is just an elegant name, given to the set of technologies that allow asynchronous communication with the server and help in working with the response received.
These technologies include, but aren't limited to, HTML for constructing a structure of the document, CSS to style it on the go, JavaScript to write a whole AJAX engine and interact with other APIs, HTML DOM to make dynamic changes to the document, and XML or JSON for exchanging data between the client and the server.
What will you learn in this course?
This course is aimed at making you perfect in the understanding of AJAX and developing dynamic application using it. In this course you'll learn tons of details on how AJAX works behind the scenes, how to comprehend HTTP requests and responses, how to incorporate events into our code and much more.
Being specific, at the end of this course you will know:
- The history behind the birth of AJAX and the
XMLHttpRequest()
object. - The ideas to composing a basic AJAX request.
- What are request states and HTTP statuses, and the role both these play in AJAX applications.
- How to work with various xhr events, such as
onreadystatechange
,onload
,onerror
,onabort
and so on. - How to hanle different types of responses like XML, JSON, text files, and HTML; and how to work with headers of the response.
- Different HTTP methods to dispatch out requests, especially
GET
andPOST
. - and even more....
Why should you take this course?
AJAX is quite common out there and so are the courses teaching it. But what does this course has to offer to you such that you must consider taking it, compared to the rest out there.
- We explore the idea and purpose behind each function, property, method, or any new concept we introduce to you, in particularly fine detail. We believe that one must understand the theory behind each new concept rather than just seeing the distant picture of it and implementing it each time, without any sort of knowledge of its inner workings.
- Throughout this course, within chapters, you'll find various tasks and sub-quizes to further solidy your understanding of the topic being discussed at the moment. The tasks showcase certain practical-level ideas of AJAX to you which definitely help you better understand the technology.
Prerequisites
-
HTML
While developing AJAX applications, it's typical to design HTLM markup for various things.
-
CSS
Although CSS isn't an immediate requirement for AJAX apps, it's used when designing interface features. Thereby, a profound knowledge of CSS will be really helpful in the longer run.
-
JavaScript
The heart of AJAX is the
XMLHttpRequest
object. Moreover, it's also customary to mutate the DOM via DOM methods, all of which are JavaScript APIs.