I completely agree with Matthew R, Matthew O, Simon, and others on
this... I put my vote in for keeping the framework JavaScript-independent.
Regards,
Bryce Lohr
Matthew Ratzloff wrote:
Hi everyone,
I feel compelled to trot out my essay from last year on this subject. It
has some concepts that apply to this discussion.
http://www.builtfromsource.com/2006/12/20/does-ajax-have-a-place-in-the-application-framework/
Handling an Ajax request is just like handling any other type of request,
and Zend_Controller_Request_Http even provides an isXmlHttpRequest()
method that's compatible "out of the box" with Prototype, jQuery, and YUI.
And with one line of JavaScript you get that same functionality with Dojo
and MooTools.
But pairing Zend Framework with a specific JavaScript library is a bad
idea, and frankly I'm unconvinced that projects like Xajax are a net gain.
There are so many good JavaScript-only frameworks out there
already--Prototype, jQuery, etc.--that make Ajax ridiculously simple.
Really, it was never that difficult in the first place. In trying to
"simplify" it by making the API PHP-only it will only complicate things
more.
-Matt
On Mon, December 3, 2007 5:09 pm, Mark Maynereid wrote:
Thank you for those answers Matthew. Very encouraging. I look forward to
the
proposal unification keenly. Hopefully there is a good appetite for
nailing
this one given all the great work so far, and the features you have listed
below are certainly what I would hope for. Perhaps they are in order of
priority too?
I see you mention AJAX for client side validation, and note others have
commented on ZF/AJAX concerns in general. I imagine trying to deliver a
decent quality AJAX library from scratch now would be daunting. Yet AJAX
is
expected these days so perhaps third party libraries are inevitable here
(for now).
Also personally, I do not particularly enjoy having to write code twice
(first to write server side validation in PHP, and then have to write the
code yet again in Javascript for client side validation). Then have to
keep
it in sync and maintain a doubled up codebase. My JS is weak anyway.
Wouldn't it be cleaner to hand off the whole AJAX thing so we can treat it
like a black box and control it purely from PHP? Those that want to are
then
freed from Javascript coding entirely, and as a massive bonus, the server
side validation code potentially becomes common to the client side
validation code! Codebase duplication eliminated :) While trawling the
XJAX
libraries I came across the xajax project which appears to do precisely
this:
Here's a quick 10 minute overview:
http://www.xajaxproject.org/docs/xajax-in-10-minutes.php
I have played with xajax a little and if it is as good as it appears, I
would love to see provision for it in ZF. My hunch is it could also prove
the easiest and tidiest of all ZF AJAX solutions to roll out first
precisely
because of its apparently unique 100% PHP API. Any good?
Regards,
Mark
