JSON

Easy HTML Templates with Mustache

27 April 2012 / 12 Comments

Templates are a great way to separate your website’s code from its design. There are many great web template systems available for different languages and platforms, including Smarty for PHP and the Django template language for Python.

In this tutorial you’ll explore Mustache, a relatively new and very simple template system that you can easily use to create HTML templates. You’ll look at various topics, including:

The advantages of using Mustache
How to install and use the Mustache processor
How Mustache tags, variables, and data objects work
Using sections to create conditions and loops
Including one Mustache template inside another
…and lots more!

Along the way, you’ll see plenty of code examples that show you how Mustache works. At the end of the tutorial, there’s a complete example that uses Mustache, along with jQuery, to create a simple Ajax-based product list page.

Ajax with jQuery: A Beginner’s Guide

6 March 2012 / 4 Comments

Many modern websites — and practically all web apps — use a technique called Ajax to provide a smooth, fast experience for the user. From apps like Gmail and Google Maps through to JavaScript frameworks like jQuery Mobile, Ajax is a popular way to fetch data from a server in the background and update the page dynamically.

Writing Ajax JavaScript code from the ground up can be fiddly. However, many JavaScript libraries, including jQuery, have excellent high-level support for Ajax, making it easy for you to build Ajax-driven websites and apps with minimal hassle.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the basics of making Ajax requests using jQuery. You’ll look at:

Exactly what Ajax is, how it works, and why it’s a good thing
How to make various types of Ajax requests using jQuery
Sending data to the server along with an Ajax request
Handling the Ajax response from the server, and capturing any data returned in the response
How to customize jQuery’s Ajax handling and change default settings, and
A few links to some more advanced Ajax-related info and tips.

To keep things simple, this tutorial concentrates on the JavaScript side of things, rather than delving into server-side coding. However, it’s pretty easy to write server-side scripts that work with Ajax. If you want to learn a server-side language, check out my PHP tutorials.

Ready to learn Ajax? Let’s get started!

JSON Basics: What You Need to Know

24 March 2011 / 11 Comments

If you’ve developed websites or web apps at all, you’ve probably heard of JSON, at least in passing. But what exactly is JSON? What can it do, and how do you use it?

In this tutorial you’ll learn the basics of JSON. You’ll look at the following topics:

What JSON does
The kinds of things JSON is used for
How to create JSON strings
A simple JSON example
How JSON compares to XML, and
How to work with JSON using both JavaScript and PHP.

Let’s get started!

25 Web Tech Buzzwords Demystified

9 September 2010 / 5 Comments

The web is a fast-moving industry, and it seems as if a new web technology buzzword emerges every time you blink. From Ajax to WOFF, the array of buzzwords — and the technologies behind them — can be quite bewildering at times.

How are you, dear web developer, to keep up with it all?!

In this article I list 25 key web buzzwords that every modern web developer should understand. For each buzzword, I explain its meaning, talk about why the technology is useful, and include a few links for further reading.

Enjoy!

JSON

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