Monday 13 June 2011 12:56:44 am

Good introduction!

A couple of devious alternatives, that might be worth exploring:

• xml or json, to be consumed by ajax calls, can be produced by templates too. Using an url similar to /layout/set/json/content/view/json/57, and providing the corresponding templates, you can make ajax calls that fetch the data by using a "proxy" node as service provider. Benefit: you get the caching opportunities of the template system. Downsides: templates are slower to execute than pure php code, at least on 1st run; this can only be used by default to view data, not to manipulate it (unless you produce json/xml templates for other views than content/view). An extension that provides xml and json templates to get you started quickly on this path: ggxmlview
• the ezwebservicesapi extension (which can use either ezjscore or ggwebservices for the transport layer) allows developers to access all existing template fetch functions (including custom ones) without having to write a single line of code. It can be a great timesaver for the ajax developer. Ps: it even allows to execute existing modules/views using ajax calls, but the results can be quite surprising, depending on the module.

Principal Consultant International Business
Member of the Community Project Board