WebServices + AJAX

One thing I've never understood is how there can be so much hype about AJAX, and so much hype about Web Services, and yet no one seems to realize these two are naturally suited for each other. Web Services provides an open XML way to send data over the HTTP protocol, and AJAX provides a client-side mechanism for making HTTP calls to ask for data. What more does it take to make it obvious that these two are made for each other?

Well, from all of the amazing open-source libraries out there supporting AJAX, it seems clear that no one on the AJAX side is thinking about this approach, because they are not built with XML formatted WS compatibility in mind. It seems like AJAX is all about using raw text data formats, or just receiving and replacing HTML content directly, or anything other than a well-structured data format made for transferring structured data properly.

So I've decided to take some of the best of what I've found out there, and extend it to support the WS/XML approach in a more developer-friendly way. In a nutshell, I want to be able to put an include on my page, and then have some simple javascript functions that do display logic, by essentially accessing Web Services and handling the results as objects, rather than doing my own XML generation and parsing. Then an added bonus would be to have some binding capability, to automatically bind requests and responses to certain controls on the page, without having to actually write a lot of javascript to do the binding and processing logic myself.

There are a lot of AJAX libraries and approaches out there, so it would be impossible to really highlight them all. I'm a big fan of the Anthem framework. This framework seems to replicate the "developer feel" of traditional ASP.NET server-side controls, and so it feels more natural from a developer's perspective than, for example, the new .NET framework's AJAX controls. But even the Anthem framework seems to be focused on raw html replacement, rather than a more structured approach to passing data back and forth.

One article I really liked was this one on CodeProject, about integrating the jQuery javascript library for AJAX on an ASP.NET page. It's very simple, and allows me to focus on the WS aspects for now, without having to think about all of the added layers of ASP.NET control libraries. Those libraries add a great nice-to-have set of developer features, but I'm inclined to go back and start from the ground up, focusing first on a more solid communication infrastructure. Once we've got the passing back and forth of data working in a structured WS/XML approach, then we can try to adapt the control library facade to make development easier.

I've already got some code working with WS as an internal communications protocol for a very raw AJAX approach. Stay tuned with a follow-up article where I'll present more progress on this idea.