New York PHP Conference 2006

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• New York PHP Conference 2006
• Download this presentation
• http//www.jaisenmathai.com/talks/nyphpcon2006/

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• About myself
• I started doing web development in the late 90's
• I currently work at FotoFlix where we are
  building an online photo sharing/management
  application
• Prior to FotoFlix I worked at General Motors and
  Clear Channel Communications

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• Overview
• What is JSON?
• What is AJAX?
• Why do PHP, JSON and AJAX make a great team?
• How can you prepare to implement PHP, JSON and
  AJAX into your web application?

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• What is JSON?
• JavaScript Object Notation
• It is an extremely lightweight data-interchange
  format
• JSON is language independant but uses conventions
  that are familiar to programmers of the C family
  of languages
• This includes JavaScript, Perl, Python etc.

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• What does JSON look like?
• Arrays
• 456,7390,96748,142
• php, perl, python
• 673, new york
• Objects
• username guest, password secret
• Nested
• userData username guest, password
  secret, Ids1,2,3

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• What are the benefits of JSON?
• It is very efficient
• Data exchange between client and server is
  trivial
• Native support for JSON can be compiled into PHP
  using PECL or alternatively a PEAR library is
  available
• The compiled support is extremely fast
• JSON offers a unique solution to the problem of
  cross domain scripting
• We will be looking at an example of this later

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• What about XML?
• Developers are often looking for a good way to
  exchange data
• JSON allows developers to focus on the data
  instead of worrying about parsing the data back
  and forth from XML to a native data type
• JSON lets developers pass data back and forth
  from PHP to JavaScript drastically reducing
  development time

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• When not to use JSON
• Some applications and libraries choose to use
  other formats to exchange data and may make the
  use of JSON a poor decision
• Use JSON where it makes sense

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• Launch Yahoo! Example

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• Overview
• What is JSON?
• What is AJAX?
• Why do PHP, JSON and AJAX make a great team?
• How can you prepare to implement PHP, JSON and
  AJAX into your web application?

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• What is AJAX?
• Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
• Define AJAX for this session
• For this session the term AJAX is NOT limited to
  a specific set of technologies
• We will look at AJAX as an alternative method for
  a client and server to interact through a web page

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• AJAX is a new term but it is not a new technology
• Microsoft added support for asynchronous
  scripting in IE 5
• Prior to IE 5 IFRAMEs were used to achieve these
  effects
• Google maps is arguably the first AJAX
  application that got people thinking about new
  ways to build web applications

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• What are the benefits of AJAX?
• AJAX can improve user experience
• A user can interact with a web page without
  having to wait for the page to reload
• The perceived responsiveness of a web page can be
  drastically increased

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• Some common pitfalls of AJAX
• Like any technology that gets a lot of attention
  AJAX can be misused
• It is important to identify what portions of your
  application would benefit from AJAX

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• Launch Zip Code Example

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• Overview
• What is JSON?
• What is AJAX?
• Why do PHP, JSON and AJAX make a great team?
• How can you prepare to implement PHP, JSON and
  AJAX into your web application?

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• Why do PHP, JSON and AJAX make such a great team?
• Because AJAX requires frequent data exchange
  between PHP on the server and JavaScript on the
  client...JSON is a natural choice

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• Can these technologies help your application
  scale?
• When implemented properly you can minimize
  bandwidth and server load
• The server can send data to the client using JSON
  and the client's machine can render the data
• This saves bandwidth
• Infrequently requested data can be served to the
  client on demand resulting in a decrease in the
  number of database queries executed
• This reduces the load on the server

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• Launch PHP, JSON and AJAX Example

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• Overview
• What is JSON?
• What is AJAX?
• Why do PHP, JSON and AJAX make a great team?
• How can you prepare to implement PHP, JSON and
  AJAX into your web application?

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• What you need to know to begin implementing these
  technologies
• Marking up a web page is very different from
  scripting a web page
• Developing AJAX applications requires a different
  skillset than traditional web applications
• Requires the developer to be fluent in PHP and
  JavaScript

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• How do you put together a good team?
• Find developers with strong skills in both PHP
  and JavaScript
• It will be hard to find developers with lots of
  experience with AJAX and JSON because they are
  relatively new technologies
• Look for developers that are eager to learn

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• How can you equip your team to develop using
  these technologies?
• Give them time to research the topics using
  online resources
• Give them an existing problem to fix or
  improve
• Send a lead developer to a conference covering
  these topics... like this one

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• Overview
• What is JSON?
• What is AJAX?
• Why do PHP, JSON and AJAX make a great team?
• How can you prepare to implement PHP, JSON and
  AJAX into your web application?

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• Resources
• http//www.php.net
• http//www.json.org
• http//www.ajaxian.com/
• http//pear.php.net/pepr/pepr-proposal-show.php?id
  198
• http//www.aurore.net/projects/php-json/

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• The End