Re: netWindow - PHP data transfer model

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On Friday 18 July 2003 2:10 am, Christian Boulanger wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> thanks for your comments.
>
> > The 3 implementations are:
> > - xmlhttp (available with IE and mozilla)
> > - generated script elements
> > - an iframe data channel
>
> Sounds great. If you or somebody from the team could throw together
> a few sample lines of codes to show how these implementations work
> in practice, that would be wonderful.

Working on it = )

In practice, the most commonly used of these is the iframe data 
channel, and that's what the sample apps to date have been using. The 
xmlhttp object has seen use in loading gigantic data sets to the 
combo-box (as Mark mentioned), but won't work on browsers other than 
IE an Moz (which is one reason so many other ways to load data into 
the combo-box are provided).

We have tried to do something like data binding the the past (the 
__data__ object), however it has proven to be overly-complex to use 
since data is returned for a class of requester and not a single 
requester object (which is more often the desired behaviour), meaning 
that callbacks were having to route data requests themselves, which 
is highly sub-optimal. Hopefully I'll get a chance to fix this soon.

As for the others, they are pretty much standard functions of modern 
browsers.

> > Note that today there is no SOAP or other xml-ish RPC mechanism.
> > In part this is because we are more believers in REST.
>
> I am dimly aware of SOAP, but what is REST? (Sorry, I am a newby to
> this area).

SOAP vs REST:

	http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/04/25/soap_vs_rest.html
	http://advogato.org/article/464.html

Basically you encode your query parameters in an HTTP GET string and 
get your responses via normal HTTP. It's basically a new name for 
what everyone has been doing all along anyway. Sigh. Makes you wonder 
about how these "web people" ever get anything done, what with all 
their renaming and wheel re-inventing.

> > I'd suggest you read up on the xmlhttp interface so you
> > understand what is available without NW first:
>
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/xmlsdk30/htm/xmobjpmexmlhtt
>prequest. asp
>
> > http://www.mozilla.org/xmlextras/
>
> I will look into that, but I think most enlightening would just be
> a few lines of commented sample code.  (Client side, Server side)

Yes. I think we'd all like that. I really don't know when I'll get to 
it. My life is uber-crazy right now and paying clients have bugs that 
need fixing. 

You'll be the first to know when I get sample code done (hopefully 
soon!).

- -- 
Alex Russell
[email protected]
[email protected]
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