We Need To Talk: Communicating with PHP and jQuery

WE NEED TO TALK... Communication between PHP & jQuery

JQUERY • Written in Javascript • jQuery is just a library • Event handling • DOM Manipulation • Animation • AJAX

ASYNCHRONOUS DATA • Data on demand • More responsive app (for some situations) • Decouple presentation from data

XML vs. JSON vs. Plain Text vs. HTML Q: Which should you use!? A: It depends!

XML Pros Cons • Bulky • Easily readable • Notalways trivial to • Efﬁcient parse • Strict • Can be slow

HTML Pros Cons • Bad for data • Simple • Only for presentation • Great for layout • Hasto be rendered • Flexible every time

PLAIN TEXT Pros Cons • Asreadable as you want • No semantics to make it • What format is the • Can be anything content? • Can be very fast • No context

JSON { "users": [ { "name":"Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo", "userId":"jjjjs", "job":"A random guy at Moe's", • JavaScript Object Notation "age":42 }, { "name":"Mike Rowe", "userId":"mrowe", "job":"All Of Them", • Collection of name/value pairs "age":48 }, { "name":"Vincent Price", "userId":"vprice", "job":"Creepy Guy", • Human Readable "age":82 }, { "name":"Morgan Freeman", "userId":"mfreeman", "job":"God, President, Personal Driver, Inmate", "age":78 } ] }

JSON CONTINUED... Pros Cons • Super fast • Native parsing in browser • Not quite as readable • No superﬂuous mark up • Not as useful for • Strict passing HTML • Language independent

JSON PARSING • Always use a parser!!! • Never user eval() – it’s not safe! • $.parseJSON(); (jquery) or JSON.parse(); (native) • Parsers are faster than eval(); • In PHP: json_decode();

JSON CREATION • Never generate JSON by hand • Always use a library! • JSON libs available for almost any language (json.org) • Native browser support: JSON.stringify(); • In PHP: json_encode();

RETURN VALUES • Always return something from your back-end • Better to return an object rather than a random string (an array)

EXAMPLES! • Form processing • Front-end vs. back-end • Templating • Debugging • http://github.com/gplocke/TriPUG-PHP-JS-Example

FORM PROCESSING • Asynchronous form processing • Doesn’t interrupt the user’s work ﬂow • Remember to use only where appropriate

Robert Frost wasn’t a developer • When do you use PHP to build a view, when do you use JS

Let your front-end do some of the lifting • HTML can be created with PHP or JS • The HTML must be added to the DOM • Use JS for reusable / repeatable things • Templating

JQUERY TEMPLATES • Neat • Simple • Powerful • Fast • http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/templates/

Back-End View Generation • Complex or extensive markup • One-time things • Forms

DEBUGGING • FireBug + FirePHP (ﬁrephp.org) • Only for Firefox • FirePHPCore library or Zend Framework

THANKS! Email: gplocke@gmail.com Twitter: @gplocke http://www.broken-notebook.com

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We Need To Talk: Communicating with PHP and jQuery

by Garrison Locke on Oct 19, 2010

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