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Ajax (programming)
Ajax (also AJAX /ˈeɪdʒæks/; short for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML")[1][2] is a set of Web development
techniques using many Web technologies on the client side to create asynchronous Web applications. With
Asynchronous Javascript
Ajax, Web applications can send and retrieve data from a server asynchronously (in the background) without
and XML
interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. By decoupling the data interchange layer from
the presentation layer, Ajax allows Web pages, and by extension Web applications, to change content
dynamically without the need to reload the entire page.[3] In practice, modern implementations commonly
utilize JSON instead of XML due to the advantages of JSON being native to JavaScript.[4]

Ajax is not a single technology, but rather a group of technologies. HTML and CSS can be used in combination
In computer science, Logo
asynchronous 
of AJAX I/O is a
to mark up and style information. The webpage can then be modified by JavaScript to dynamically display
form –of input/output processing that permits
First appeared 2005
and allow the user to interact with — the new information. The built-in XMLHttpRequest object other within processing to continue before the
Filename extensions
JavaScript is commonly used to execute Ajax on webpages allowing websites to load content onto the transmission
screen
.js
has finished.
without refreshing the page. Ajax is not a new technology, or different language, just existing technologies used File formats Javascript
in new ways. Influenced by
Javascript and XML

Contents
History
Technologies
Drawbacks
Examples
JavaScript example
jQuery example
Fetch example
See also
References
External links

History
In the early-to-mid 1990s, most Web sites were based on complete HTML pages. Each user action required that a complete new page be loaded from the
server. This process was inefficient, as reflected by the user experience: all page content disappeared, then the new page appeared. Each time the browser
reloaded a page because of a partial change, all of the content had to be re-sent, even though only some of the information had changed. This placed
additional load on the server and made bandwidth a limiting factor on performance.

In 1996, the iframe tag was introduced by Internet Explorer; like the object element, it can load or fetch content asynchronously. In 1998, the Microsoft
Outlook Web App team developed the concept behind the XMLHttpRequest scripting object.[5] It appeared as XMLHTTP in the second version of the
MSXML library,[5][6] which shipped with Internet Explorer 5.0 in March 1999.[7]

The functionality of the XMLHTTP ActiveX control in IE 5 was later implemented by Mozilla, Safari, Opera and other browsers as the XMLHttpRequest
JavaScript object.[8] Microsoft adopted the native XMLHttpRequest model as of Internet Explorer 7. The ActiveX version is still supported in Internet
Explorer, but not in Microsoft Edge. The utility of these background HTTP requests and asynchronous Web technologies remained fairly obscure until it
started appearing in large scale online applications such as Outlook Web App (2000)[9] and Oddpost (2002).

Google made a wide deployment of standards-compliant, cross browser Ajax with Gmail (2004) and Google Maps (2005).[10] In October 2004
Kayak.com's public beta release was among the first large-scale e-commerce uses of what their developers at that time called "the xml http thing".[11] This
increased interest in AJAX among web program developers.

The term Ajax was publicly used on 18 February 2005 by Jesse James Garrett in an article titled Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications, based on
techniques used on Google pages.[1]

On 5 April 2006, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the first draft specification for the XMLHttpRequest object in an attempt to create an
official Web standard.[12][13] The latest draft of the XMLHttpRequest object was published on 30 January 2014.[14]

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Technologies
The term Ajax has come to represent a broad group of Web technologies that
can be used to implement a Web application that communicates with a server in
the background, without interfering with the current state of the page. In the
article that coined the term Ajax,[1][3] Jesse James Garrett explained that the
following technologies are incorporated:

HTML (or XHTML) and CSS for presentation

The Document Object Model (DOM) for dynamic display of and interaction
with data
JSON or XML for the interchange of data, and XSLT for its manipulation
The XMLHttpRequest object for asynchronous communication
JavaScript to bring these technologies together
Since then, however, there have been a number of developments in the
technologies used in an Ajax application, and in the definition of the term Ajax
itself. XML is no longer required for data interchange and, therefore, XSLT is no
longer required for the manipulation of data. JavaScript Object Notation
(JSON) is often used as an alternative format for data interchange,[15] although
other formats such as preformatted HTML or plain text can also be used.[16] A
variety of popular JavaScript libraries, including JQuery, include abstractions to
assist in executing Ajax requests.

The conventional model for a Web Application versus an

Asynchronous HTML and HTTP (http://microformats.org/wiki/rest/ahah)
application using Ajax
(AHAH) involves using XMLHTTPRequest to retrieve (X)HTML fragments,
which are then inserted directly into the Web page.

Drawbacks
Any user whose browser does not support JavaScript or XMLHttpRequest, or has this functionality disabled, will not be able to properly use pages
that depend on Ajax. Simple devices (such as smartphones and PDAs) may not support the required technologies. The only way to let the user carry
out functionality is to fall back to non-JavaScript methods. This can be achieved by making sure links and forms can be resolved properly and not
relying solely on Ajax.[17]
Similarly, some Web applications that use Ajax are built in a way that cannot be read by screen-reading technologies, such as JAWS. The WAI-ARIA
standards provide a way to provide hints in such a case.[18]
Screen readers that are able to use Ajax may still not be able to properly read the dynamically generated content.[19]
The same-origin policy prevents some Ajax techniques from being used across domains,[12] although the W3C has a draft of the XMLHttpRequest
object that would enable this functionality.[20] Methods exist to sidestep this security feature by using a special Cross Domain Communications
channel embedded as an iframe within a page,[21] or by the use of JSONP.
The asynchronous callback-style of programming required can lead to complex code that is hard to maintain, to debug[22] and to test.[23]
Because of the asynchronous nature of Ajax, each chunk of data that is sent or received by the client occurs in a connection established specifically
for that event. This creates a requirement that for every action, the client must poll the server, instead of listening, which incurs significant overhead.
This overhead leads to several times higher latency with Ajax than what can be achieved with a technology such as websockets.[24]
In pre-HTML5 browsers, pages dynamically created using successive Ajax requests did not automatically register themselves with the browser's
history engine, so clicking the browser's "back" button may not have returned the browser to an earlier state of the Ajax-enabled page, but may have
instead returned to the last full page visited before it. Such behavior — navigating between pages instead of navigating between page states — may
be desirable, but if fine-grained tracking of page state is required, then a pre-HTML5 workaround was to use invisible iframes to trigger changes in
the browser's history. A workaround implemented by Ajax techniques is to change the URL fragment identifier (the part of a URL after the "#") when
an Ajax-enabled page is accessed and monitor it for changes.[25][26] HTML5 provides an extensive API standard for working with the browser's
history engine.[27]
Dynamic Web page updates also make it difficult to bookmark and return to a particular state of the application. Solutions to this problem exist, many
of which again use the URL fragment identifier.[25][26] On the other hand, as AJAX-intensive pages tend to function as applications rather than
content, bookmarking interim states rarely makes sense. Nevertheless, the solution provided by HTML5 for the above problem also applies for
this.[27]
Depending on the nature of the Ajax application, dynamic page updates may disrupt user interactions, particularly if the Internet connection is slow or
unreliable. For example, editing a search field may trigger a query to the server for search completions, but the user may not know that a search
completion popup is forthcoming, and if the Internet connection is slow, the popup list may show up at an inconvenient time, when the user has
already proceeded to do something else.
Excluding Google,[28] most major Web crawlers do not execute JavaScript code,[29] so in order to be indexed by Web search engines, a Web
application must provide an alternative means of accessing the content that would normally be retrieved with Ajax. It has been suggested that a
headless browser may be used to index content provided by Ajax-enabled websites, although Google is no longer recommending the Ajax crawling
proposal they made in 2009.[30]

Examples

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JavaScript example
An example of a simple Ajax request using the GET method, written in JavaScript.

get-ajax-data.js:

// This is the client-side script.

// Initialize the HTTP request.

var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open('GET', 'send-ajax-data.php');

// Track the state changes of the request.

xhr.onreadystatechange = function () {
var DONE = 4; // readyState 4 means the request is done.
var OK = 200; // status 200 is a successful return.
if (xhr.readyState === DONE) {
if (xhr.status === OK) {
console.log(xhr.responseText); // 'This is the output.'
} else {
console.log('Error: ' + xhr.status); // An error occurred during the request.
}
}
};

// Send the request to send-ajax-data.php

xhr.send(null);

send-ajax-data.php:

<?php
// This is the server-side script.

// Set the content type.

header('Content-Type: text/plain');

// Send the data back.

echo "This is the output.";
?>

Many developers dislike the syntax used in the XMLHttpRequest object, so some of the following workarounds have been created.

jQuery example
The popular JavaScript library jQuery has implemented abstractions which enable developers to use Ajax more conveniently. Although it still uses
XMLHttpRequest behind the scenes, the following is the same example as above using the 'ajax' method.

$.ajax({
type: 'GET',
url: 'send-ajax-data.php',
dataType: "JSON", // data type expected from server
success: function (data) {
console.log(data);
},
error: function() {
console.log('Error: ' + data);
}
});

jQuery also implements a 'get' method which allows the same code to be written more concisely.

$.get('send-ajax-data.php').done(function(data) {
console.log(data);
}).fail(function(data) {
console.log('Error: ' + data);
});

Fetch example
Fetch is a new native JavaScript API. Although not yet supported by all browsers, it is gaining momentum as a more popular way to execute Ajax.
According to Google Developers Documentation (https://developers.google.com/web/ilt/pwa/working-with-the-fetch-api), "Fetch makes it easier to
make web requests and handle responses than with the older XMLHttpRequest."

fetch('send-ajax-data.php').then(function(response) {
return response.text();
}).then(function(data) {

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console.log(data);
}).catch(function(error) {
console.log('Error: ' + error);
});

As seen above, fetch relies on JavaScript promises (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Promise).

See also
ActionScript
Comet (programming) (also known as Reverse Ajax)
Google Instant
HTTP/2
List of Ajax frameworks
Node.js
Rich Internet application
WebSocket
HTML5
Javascript

References
1. Jesse James Garrett (18 February 2005). "Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications" (http://adaptivepath.org/ideas/ajax-new-approach-web-applica
tions/). AdaptivePath.com. Retrieved 19 June 2008.
2. "Ajax - Web developer guides" (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/AJAX). MDN Web Docs. Retrieved 2018-02-27.
3. Ullman, Chris (March 2007). Beginning Ajax (http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-303217.html). wrox. ISBN 978-0-470-10675-4. Archived (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20080705101852/http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-303217.html) from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved
24 June 2008.
4. "JSON: The Fat-Free Alternative to XML" (http://www.json.org/xml.html). www.json.org. Retrieved 2017-02-17.
5. "Article on the history of XMLHTTP by an original developer" (https://web.archive.org/web/20070623125327/http://www.alexhopmann.com/xmlhttp.ht
m). Alexhopmann.com. 31 January 2007. Archived from the original (http://www.alexhopmann.com/xmlhttp.htm) on 23 June 2007. Retrieved 14 July
2009.
6. "Specification of the IXMLHTTPRequest interface from the Microsoft Developer Network" (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms759148(VS.85).
aspx). Msdn.microsoft.com. Retrieved 2009-07-14.
7. Dutta, Sunava (2006-01-23). "Native XMLHTTPRequest object" (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/01/23/516393.aspx). IEBlog. Microsoft.
Retrieved 2006-11-30.
8. "Dynamic HTML and XML: The XMLHttpRequest Object" (https://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/xmlhttpreq.html). Apple Inc. Retrieved
25 June 2008.
9. Hopmann, Alex. "Story of XMLHTTP" (https://web.archive.org/web/20100330150027/http://www.alexhopmann.com/story-of-xmlhttp/). Alex
Hopmann’s Blog. Archived from the original (http://www.alexhopmann.com/story-of-xmlhttp/) on 30 March 2010. Retrieved 17 May 2010.
10. "A Brief History of Ajax" (http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ajaxhistory). Aaron Swartz. 22 December 2005. Retrieved 4 August 2009.
11. English, Paul. "Kayak User Interface" (http://kayaklabs.blogspot.com/2006/04/kayak-user-interface.html). OFFICIAL KAYAK.COM TECHNOBLOG.
Retrieved 22 May 2014.
12. "The XMLHttpRequest Object" (http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-XMLHttpRequest-20060405/). World Wide Web Consortium. 5 April 2006. Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20080516060525/http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-XMLHttpRequest-20060405/) from the original on 16 May 2008.
Retrieved 25 June 2008.
13. van Kesteren, Anne; Jackson, Dean. "The XMLHttpRequest Object" (http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-XMLHttpRequest-20060405/). W3.org. W3C.
Retrieved 2015-11-14.
14. Kesteren, Anne; Aubourg, Julian; Song, Jungkee; Steen, Hallvord R. M. "XMLHttpRequest Level 1" (http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-XMLHttpReques
t-20140130/). W3.org. W3C. Retrieved 2015-11-14.
15. "JavaScript Object Notation" (http://tapestry.apache.org/tapestry4.1/ajax/json.html). Apache.org. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20080616113
121/http://tapestry.apache.org/tapestry4.1/ajax/json.html) from the original on 16 June 2008. Retrieved 4 July 2008.
16. "Speed Up Your Ajax-based Apps with JSON" (https://web.archive.org/web/20080704134131/http://www.devx.com/Webdev/Article/32651).
DevX.com. Archived from the original (http://www.devx.com/Webdev/Article/32651) on 4 July 2008. Retrieved 4 July 2008.
17. Quinsey, Peter. "User-proofing Ajax" (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/userproofingajax).
18. "WAI-ARIA Overview" (http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria.php). W3C. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20101026062837/http://www.w3.org/WAI/i
ntro/aria.php) from the original on 26 October 2010. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
19. Edwards, James (5 May 2006). "Ajax and Screenreaders: When Can it Work?" (http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/ajax-screenreaders-work).
sitepoint.com. Retrieved 27 June 2008.
20. "Access Control for Cross-Site Requests" (http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/access-control/). World Wide Web Consortium. Archived (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20080514034546/http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/access-control/) from the original on 14 May 2008. Retrieved 27 June 2008.

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21. "Secure Cross-Domain Communication in the Browser" (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735305.aspx). The Architecture Journal (MSDN).
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20100329064533/http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735305.aspx) from the original on 29 March 2010.
Retrieved 27 April 2010.
22. Cuthbertson, Tim. "What is asynchronous programming, and why is it so damn awkward?" (http://gfxmonk.net/2010/07/04/defer-taming-asynchronou
s-javascript-with-coffeescript.html#1). GFX Monk. Retrieved 19 October 2010.
23. "Selenium documentation: Fetching a Page" (http://seleniumhq.org/docs/03_webdriver.html#fetching-a-page). Selenium. Retrieved 6 October 2011.
It is worth noting that if your page uses a lot of Ajax on load then WebDriver may not know when it has completely loaded. If you need to ensure such
pages are fully loaded, then you can use Explicit and Implicit Waits.
24. Pimentel, Victoria; Nickerson, Bradford G. (2012-05-08). "Communicating and Displaying Real-Time Data with WebSocket". Internet Computing,
IEEE. 16 (4): 45–53. doi:10.1109/MIC.2012.64 (https://doi.org/10.1109/MIC.2012.64).
25. "Why use Ajax?" (http://www.interaktonline.com/support/articles/Details/Ajax:+Asynchronously+Moving+Forward-Why+use+Ajax%3F.html?id_art=36
&id_asc=309). InterAKT. 10 November 2005. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20080529080808/http://www.interaktonline.com/support/articles/
Details/AJAX%3A%2BAsynchronously%2BMoving%2BForward-Why%2Buse%2BAJAX?.html%3Fid_art=36&id_asc=309) from the original on 29
May 2008. Retrieved 26 June 2008.
26. "Deep Linking for AJAX" (http://blog.onthewings.net/2009/04/08/deep-linking-for-ajax/).
27. "HTML5 specification" (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/history.html). Retrieved 21 October 2011.
28. Hendriks, Erik (23 May 2014). "Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index" (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2014/0
5/understanding-web-pages-better.html?m=1). Google. Retrieved 24 May 2015.
29. Prokoph, Andreas (8 May 2007). "Help Web crawlers efficiently crawl your portal sites and Web sites" (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-s
itemaps/index.html). IBM. Retrieved 22 April 2009.
30. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/deprecating-our-ajax-crawling-scheme.html

External links
Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications (http://www.adaptivepath.org/ideas/ajax-new-approach-web-applications/) — Article that coined the Ajax
term and Q&A
Ajax (programming) (https://curlie.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/JavaScript/AJAX) at Curlie (based on DMOZ)
Ajax Tutorial (http://www.xul.fr/en-xml-ajax.html) with GET, POST, text and XML examples.

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