Ajax and Web Services

Ajax and Web Services

Ajax and web services make natural allies in the struggle to build simpler, more maintainable, and more user-friendly web applications. This document provides real-world examples of how these two technologies can work together.

Some basic knowledge of both Ajax and web services is required, but wherever possible, I’ve pointed you to resources to help fill in the blanks.

Many of the examples use public web services from Yahoo! and Google. They are both search-oriented web services, but their approaches are different. Those differences are important to understand, and I’ll explore them in-depth. Although these are public web services (that is, anyone can access them on the Internet), the techniques I describe are equally valid inside a corporate firewall. I chose them primarily because they are publicly available, which makes them great testing grounds for Ajax/web services applications.

I will also explain different web proxy strategies. Proxies are an integral part of any Ajax/web services architecture; it’s important to know all your proxy options.

The web server for all examples is Apache, and when web server scripts are presented, the language is Perl. In those cases, while the tools are specific, the techniques described are general and can be implemented easily in other languages and on other web servers.