Microsoft AJAX Library Essentials: Client-side ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Explained

298 Pages·2007·11.14 MB·English

by  Bogdan Brinzarea

Microsoft AJAX Library
Essentials
Client-side ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Explained
A practical tutorial to using Microsoft AJAX Library
to enhance the user experience of your ASP.NET
Web Applications
Bogdan Brinzarea
Cristian Darie
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Microsoft AJAX Library Essentials
Client-side ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Explained
Copyright © 2007 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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critical articles or reviews.
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the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold
without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, Packt Publishing,
nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to
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However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: July 2007
Production Reference: 1230707
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847190-98-7
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by www.visionwt.com
Credits
Authors Project Coordinator
Bogdan Brinzarea Abhijeet Deobhakta
Cristian Darie
Indexer
Reviewers
Bhushan Pangaonkar
Ruben CCoorrddoobbaa
Cosmin Mihai Gheorghita
Proofreaders
Chris Smith
Development Editor
Martin Brooks
Douglas Paterson
Technical Editor Production Coordinator
Rajlaxmi Nanda Manjiri Nadkarni
Editorial Manager
Cover Designer
Dipali Chittar
Manjiri Nadkarni
Project Manager
Patricia Weir
About the Authors
Bogdan Brinzarea-Iamandi has a strong background in Computer Science
holding Master and Bachelor Degrees at the Automatic Control and Computers
Faculty of the Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania, and also an Auditor
diploma at the Computer Science department at Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France.
His main interests cover a wide area from embedded programming, distributed and
mobile computing, and new web technologies.
Currently, he is employed as Supervisor within the Alternative Channels Sector team
of the IT Division in Banca Romaneasca, a Member of National Bank of Greece. He
is Project Manager for Internet Banking and he coordinates other projects related to
new technologies and applications to be implemented in the banking area.
This is Bogdan's second book on AJAX, following the popular AJAX and PHP:
Building Responsive Web Applications, also published by Packt.
Cristian Darie is a software engineer with experience in a wide range of modern
technologies, and the author of numerous technical books. Cristian currently lives
in Bucharest, Romania, studying distributed application architectures for his PhD.
He's getting involved with various commercial and research projects, and when not
planning to buy Google, he enjoys his bit of social life. If you want to say "hi" you can
reach Cristian through his personal website at http://www.cristiandarie.ro.
About the Reviewers
Ruben Cordoba graduated from Merida University (Spain) and has a Bachelor
Degree in Technical Engineering of Computer Systems. Programming and web
development are his passions. He has loved computers from the moment his dad
presented him his first computer, an AMSTRAD CPC464 with green screen, at the
age of six. When he is not programming, Ruben likes walking his dog along the
beach, getting inspired with new ideas to code. He lives in the South of Spain and
works as a web programmer.
Cosmin Mihai Gheorghita is working as a computer programmer for a small
and dynamic Romanian company. His skills range from low-level programming
using microcontrollers to high-level web development. Although he likes to
experiment with hot technologies such as Ruby On Rails, he has specialized in .NET
technologies with an emphasis on C# and ASP.NET.

Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: AJAX and ASP.NET 7
The Big Picture 8
AJAX and Web 2.0 10
Building Websites Since 1990 11
HTTP and HTML 11
ASP.NET and Other Server-Side Technologies 13
JavaScript and Other Client-Side Technologies 14
What's Missing? 15
The World of AJAX 15
What is AJAX Made Of? 17
Uses and Misuses of AJAX 18
Introducing ASP.NET AJAX 20
Resources and Tools 21
Setting Up Your Environment 22
Installing IIS 22
Installing Visual Web Developer 25
Creating a Folder for Your Project 25
Preparing the Atlas Application in Windows Vista 26
Preparing the Atlas Web Application in Windows XP 27
Hello World! 28
Time for Action—Quickstart AJAX 31
What Just Happened? 35
Summary 43
Chapter 2: AJAX Foundations 45
JavaScript and the Document Object Model 45
Time for Action—Playing with JavaScript and the DOM 48
What Just Happened 50
Table of Contents
JavaScript Events and the DOM 51
Time for Action—Using JavaScript Events and the DOM 53
What Just Happened? 54
Even More DOM 56
Time for Action—Even More DOM 57
What Just Happened? 59
JavaScript, DOM, and CSS 61
Time for Action—Working with CSS and JavaScript 61
What Just Happened? 64
The XMLHttpRequest Object 65
Creating the XMLHttpRequest Object 65
Initiating Server Requests 69
Handling the Server Response 72
Time for Action—Making Asynchronous Calls with XMLHttpRequest 74
What Just Happened? 77
Summary 80
Chapter 3: Object-Oriented JavaScript 81
Concepts of Object-Oriented Programming 81
Objects and Classes 82
Encapsulation 83
Inheritance 83
Polymorphism 84
Object-Oriented JavaScript 84
JavaScript Functions 85
Functions as Variables 86
Anonymous Functions 88
Inner Functions and JavaScript Closures 89
JavaScript Classes 90
Class Diagrams 93
C# and JavaScript Classes 93
Referencing External Functions 96
Thinking of Objects as Associative Arrays 96
Creating Object Members on the Fly 98
Private Members 99
Prototypes 100
The JavaScript Execution Context 101
var x, this.x, and x 102
Using the Right Context 103
Inheritance using Closures and Prototypes 105
Inheritance Using Closures 105
Inheritance Using Prototyping 108
Introducing JSON 110
Summary 112
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
Chapter 4: Introducing the Microsoft AJAX Library 113
Microsoft AJAX Library Components 113
Asynchronous Communication 116
Client Asynchronous Communication 117
Server Asynchronous Communication 118
Working with WebRequest 119
Time for Action—WebRequest 120
What Just Happened? 125
More WebRequests 129
Time for Action—More WebRequest 130
What Just Happened? 132
Summary 133
Chapter 5: OOP with the Microsoft AJAX Library 135
The New Features 136
JavaScript Base Classes Extensions 136
Time for Action: Bubble Sort and Base Classes Extensions 137
What Just Happened? 140
Classes in Microsoft AJAX Library 142
The Type, Namespaces, and Events 143
Time for Action—Creating and Using the Person Class 144
What Just Happened? 148
Inheritance 154
Time for Action—Implementing Inheritance using Microsoft 156
What Just Happened? 161
AJAX Library
Enumerations 165
Interfaces 166
Ti me for action—Inheritance and Interfaces 167
What Just Happened? 173
OOP Recommendations 175
Summary 175
Chapter 6: Creating Client Components 177
DOM Elements and Events 177
Components, Behaviors, and Controls 180
Creating Components 182
Disposing of Components 183
Sys.Application and Client Page Life-Cycle Events 184
The init Event 186
The load Event 186
The pageLoad() Method 187
The pageUnload() Method 188
The unload Event 188
[ iii ]