AJAX

AJAX enables

• loading data into your web page from a web server...
• ... after the page initially loads!

AJAX Examples

• Load the comments on an article later, so the rest of the page is usable sooner
• Once a minute, check for any new comments and display them too
• Load today's weather forecast from DarkSky.net, and update it every hour
• Load an ad from a different web server and switch ads every few minutes
• Dynamically display search results as the user types their query
• Infinite scrolling like Pinterest or Twitter

AJAX Definition

Asynchronous JavaScript And XML

1. Request data from an external source
2. Parse the data returned by the request
3. Load that data into the page without a refresh
4. Data can be any formats, most common:
   • XML
   • JSON
   • HTML fragment (not an entire page)

AJAX Advantages/Disadvantages

Advantages

• Page components can be loaded individually
• New data can be loaded asynchronously
• User interacts with the page and sees results almost immediately
  • or at least more quickly than a full page reload

Disadvantages

• JavaScript must be enabled
• Adds complexity to JavaScript applications
• Without refreshes the page state can get bloated
  • Memory leaks become a bigger problem in longer-lived apps
• Screen-readers cannot read the whole page at once #a11y
• Reloading the page can show completely different content
  • Bookmarking and link sharing no longer "just work"

AJAX History

• (1998) First implemented by Microsoft for use in Outlook email web client
• (1999-2003) Several other browsers copied Microsoft for compatibility
• (2004) Google used XMLHttpRequest for loading data in Gmail and Google Maps
• (2005) AJAX Name coined by Jesse James Garrett [0]

[0] http://adaptivepath.org/ideas/ajax-new-approach-web-applications/

Jesse James Garrett Quote

(corrected for modern use)

Ajax isn’t a technology. It’s really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates:

• standards-based presentation using XHTML HTML and CSS

• dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model

• data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT JSON

• asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest Fetch

• and JavaScript binding everything together.

This was the moment that people realized web applications could be a competitor to desktop applications, and could run on every computer in the world.

XMLHttpRequest (Old Way)

• The XHR interface is quite complicated
• You must construct an XHR object, set some properties, then call open(), then call send()
• Your response handler must track the readyState property of the request and error checking is cumbersome

WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS CODE CAREFULLY

var httpRequest;

function sendRequest() {
  httpRequest = new XMLHttpRequest();
  httpRequest.onreadystatechange = printResponse;
  httpRequest.open('GET', 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1');
  httpRequest.send();
}

function printResponse() {
  if (httpRequest.readyState === XMLHttpRequest.DONE) {
    if (httpRequest.status === 200) {
      console.log(httpRequest.responseText);
    } else {
      console.log('There was a problem: ' + httpRequest.status);
      console.log({httpRequest})
    }
  }
}

Browser Fetch API - Plain Text

The Fetch interface is concise

• Please type this URL into the address bar of your browser

https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1

fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1')
  .then(function(response) {
    console.log(response.status);
    return response.text();       // body is not quite ready yet
  })
  .then(function(text) {
    console.log(text);            // now the body is ready
  });

• fetch() takes at least one argument, the URL of the resource to fetch
• fetch returns a Promise, to which you add a series of callbacks using the then method
• fetch then calls the server, just like you did in the address bar above
• Later on, after the response is received, fetch calls your callbacks in order
• The server passes the Response into the first callback function

Why Two Thens?

• The first then gets called once the HTTP headers of the response are available
• but the body might not be ready yet
• so from the first response, you call response.text(), which returns another promise
  • you immediately return that new promise from the callback
• the second then gets called after the entire body has been received
  • its parameter is a string containing the full text

Browse Fetch API - JSON

let postNumber = 1;
fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/' + postNumber)
  .then(function(response) {
    return response.json();
  })
  .then(function(myJson) {
    console.log(myJson);
  });

• response.json() is an alternative to response.text()
• The server passes the Response from the server into the first callback function
  • response.json parses the body of the response as JSON and returns real JavaScript objects
• it returns a promise to parse the body as JSON
• the second then receives a proper JavaScript Object which is the result of calling JSON.parse() on the body

Browser Fetch API - Local

If you want to request data from a local webserver, use a partial URL

fetch('/city-market.md')
  .then(function(response) {
    return response.text();
  })
  .then(function(myText) {
    console.log(myText);
  });

• The first then function happens to return response.text() because it is a Markdown file
• If it were JSON then we'd use response.json()

Browser Fetch API - Errors

• The system will raise errors as exceptions by default
• If you want to handle errors catch them like shown below
• Use .catch(function(error) { do_something_here })
• Server responses like "404 Not Found" are not considered errors by Fetch; only network errors trigger a catch

fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1')
  .then(function(response) {
    if (!response.ok) {
      console.log('HTTP error: ' + response.status);
    } else {
      return response.json();
    }
  })
  .then(function(json) {
    console.log(json);
  })
  .catch(function(error) {
    console.error('Network error:\n', error);
  });

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)

See a more comprehensive JSON lesson here: JSON lesson

Example

{"userId": 1,
  "id": 1,
  "title": "My most amazing post",
  "body": "This is my first post, isn't it great. Maybe I'll write some more."
}

NOTE:

• No comments
• No functions
• Only data is allowed
  • Objects (Hashes), Arrays, Numbers, Booleans, Strings

Parsing & Producing JSON

The Fetch API converts text into JSON for you if you call response.json()

but if you want to do it yourself...

JSON.parse converts a string into an object:

let data = JSON.parse(string)

So this would work fine:

fetch('/city-market.json')
  .then(function(response) {
    return response.text();
  })
  .then(function(myText) {
    let myObject = JSON.parse(myText);
    console.log(myObject);
  });