This practical guide shows you how to make your Java web applications more responsive and dynamic by incorporating new Ajaxian features, including suggestion lists, drag-and-drop, and more. Java developers can choose between many different ways of incorporating Ajax, from building JavaScript into your applications "by hand" to using the new Google Web Toolkit (GWT). "Ajax on Java" starts with an introduction to Ajax, showing you how to write some basic applications that use client-side JavaScript to request information from a Java servlet and display it without doing a full page reload. It also presents several strategies for communicating between the client and the server, including sending raw data, and using XML or JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) for sending more complex collections of data. The book then branches out into different approaches for incorporating Ajax, which include: the Prototype and script.aculo.us Javascript libraries, the Dojo and Rico libraries, and DWR; integrating Ajax into Java ServerPages (JSP) applications; using Ajax with Struts; integrating Ajax into Java ServerFaces (JSF) applications; and, using Google’s GWT, which offers a pure Java approach to developing web applications: your client-side components are written in Java, and compiled into HTML and JavaScript.

Ajax gives web developers the ability to build applications that are more interactive, more dynamic, more exciting and enjoyable for your users. If you’re a Java developer and haven’t tried Ajax, but would like to get started, this book is essential. Your users will be grateful.

Steven Olson has been a software developer for 20 years, starting in 1984 with ForTran, Pascal, Basic, and, later, C at a company called Signetics. In 1991, he went to work for Novell, writing C. He began dabbling in Java, and in 1995 was one of the first to join the Java development group at Novell. Since then, he has consulted or worked directly for eight other companies writing primarily in Java. Currently, he works for logoworks.com, where his programming adventures continue.

This practical guide shows you how to make your Java web applications more responsive and dynamic by incorporating new Ajaxian features, including suggestion lists, drag-and-drop, and more. Java developers can choose between many different ways of incorporating Ajax, from building JavaScript into your applications "by hand" to using the new Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

Ajax on Java starts with an introduction to Ajax, showing you how to write some basic applications that use client-side JavaScript to request information from a Java servlet and display it without doing a full page reload. It also presents several strategies for communicating between the client and the server, including sending raw data, and using XML or JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) for sending more complex collections of data.

The book then branches out into different approaches for incorporating Ajax, which include:

• The Prototype and script.aculo.us Javascript libraries, the Dojo and Rico libraries, and DWR
• Integrating Ajax into Java ServerPages (JSP) applications
• Using Ajax with Struts
• Integrating Ajax into Java ServerFaces (JSF) applications
• Using Google’s GWT, which offers a pure Java approach to developing web applications: your client-side components are written in Java, and compiled into HTML and JavaScript

Ajax gives web developers the ability to build applications that are more interactive, more dynamic, more exciting and enjoyable for your users. If you’re a Java developer and haven’t tried Ajax, but would like to get started, this book is essential. Your users will be grateful.

This book teaches everything a Java developer needs to know to start building Ajax applications on Java -- without any lecturing or hype. With plenty of hands-on labs developers will soon be up and running with the tools needed to build efficient and responsive web applications. Instruction is also provided on setting up a development environment, connecting a database, and choosing between the popular Ajax libraries and toolkits including Prototype, Scriptaculous, Dojo, and DWR. Later chapters cover projects that are more complex, including integration with Java Server Faces, Struts, Tapestry.

This hands-on book covers everything a Java developer needs to know to start building Ajax applications on Java -- without any lecturing or hype. With plenty of hands-on labs, this book teaches Java developers how to get up and running with Ajax for building efficient and responsive web applications, using examples that take advantage of Java servlets and XML. Instruction is also provided on setting up a development environment, picking a framework, and connecting a database. Later chapters cover projects that are more complex, including integration with Java Server Faces, Struts, Tapestry, and Cocoon.

Great Ajax Introduction but not advanced topics
This book is great for Ajax newbies who are confused with all the frameworks available out there. Provides a quick overview of a lot of them with working examples. I would have prefered if it included more advanced scenarios.

Very good introduction
This is an introduction to ajax using java, its not a complicated book just a sinmple read thats helps get your head around the concept of how it works.
Very easy and quicK read, read it in about 4 hours...and I was completely new to Ajax. However I do recommend buying another book if you want further information and more complex examples.

Superficial and bug-ridden
I was looking for a book on to explain the underpinnings of Ajax technology. What I purchased was little more than an advertisement for several Ajax development projects. Additionally, the author covers, in equally superficial detail, many side technologies which do not drive the subject matter forward; cascading style sheets (CSS) and Ant, for example.

The code examples have many bugs and references code/methods that have yet to be presented in the book. Meanwhile, the text explaining the examples discusses the actual methods that should have been in the code examples. The author does not take the time to discuss good object-oriented programming techniques or why this would be important.

All in all, this is a very disappointing offering.

should have been called "AJAX on JSP"
A badly named book... should have been called "AJAX on JSP", because 90% of the book is only relevant to Java Enterprise Edition frameworks and the JavaBean approach.

The quality of the Java code is poor and the book takes no time at all to offer hints at server-side principles. The examples are riddled with both security, performance and scalability holes.

One thing the book does make very clear is that there are a lot of frameworks for doing AJAX on Java, and they are all ugly as sin. However, you won’t be able to use any of them after reading this book because it simply skims over them... it points the author to the download pages and suggests reading the documentation. I’ll save you the effort of reading the book and list the libraries here:-

- Dojo
- Rico
- DWR
- Scriptaculous and Prototype
- TLDs in JSP
- Struts-Layout
- JavaWebParts
- JSFs
- Google Web Toolkit

you’ll learn just as much by looking at their websites and reading the documentation. In fact, that’s pretty much all the book will ask you to do anyway.

A pick for any library strong in web programming topics
Web programmers working with Java will appreciate this guide, which tells how to make a Java web application more responsive and dynamic by incorporating new Ajaxian features, from suggestion lists and drag-and-drop modes to producing third-party tag libraries and using Ajax with Struts. The idea is to streamline operations and use Java developer backgrounds to understand Ajax’s strengths: AJAX ON JAVA is the place to begin the process, and is a pick for any library strong in web programming topics in general and Java in particular.

Good Intro To Ajax Java
’Ajax on Java’ by Steven Olson is a nice intro book to learning how to use Ajax with your Java code. Nothing more than a quick overview (certainly not a reference) at just over 200 pages, this book will help Java programmers get their feet wet and start learning how to program the Ajax way with instant responsiveness in the Web 2.0 world.

If you program with Java and want to begin to learn how to use Ajax to make your apps hit the "turbo" button, pick up this book and start your engines!!!

**** RECOMMENDED

Coprehensive, practical and brief - good introduction to AJAX for Java developers
This is an excellent book for Java developers with simple code examples that give a comprehensive feeling of how one can exploit the power of AJAX in Java applications. It covers the most popular opensource AJAX toolkits/libraries/approaches and discusses integration with JSF and Struts. The level of detail is quite introductory and I would definitely recommend it to Java developers that have limited experience or have not worked at all with AJAX. Well written, enjoyable to read and fun to experiment with the code examples.

Save Your Money
Sad to say, this book is little more than a code dump, and the code does not run without debugging.

There are no explanations of technologies and concepts that surround Ajax, therefore, given the state of the code, there is not a lot of reason to work through the book. In fact, this is the first computer book that I returned to the seller, simply because I found so little reason to keep it on my bookshelf.

The writing in the introductory chapter gives promise, but as the book progresses the code quickly becomes dense and the organization and writing becomes unacceptably thin. I expected more from O’Reilly.

Before I gave up on this book, I was half way through it, and only one code set had ran correctly from build on. For example, the author’s code has at least four variations of the basic application URL sprinkled among the Javascript and build files of the first four examples. Finding and correcting the URL was annoying but not difficult, but even after that, the examples did not run without further debugging.

I finally threw up my hands and surrendered... defeated by the author’s rush to publication.

Way too shallow
This book is just a mix of bunch of shallow examples which can be easily found on the web. Nothing else really. You should skip it. Wondering how O’Reilly make money from it?

Value for your money
This book is a good value for the money you spent. It takes you through the basics of Ajax and then touches on the different frameworks and implementations available. The section to integrate Ajax with Struts and JSF is also useful and conceptually sufficient to get started.

Good, thorough review of the basics with extensize examples
Ajax on Java is exactly what you need when you want to try Ajax out, with Java, in a hurry. I have read through it completely and have tried more than half of the example projects and found it to be a great resource to get me started toward using Ajax right away in our shop. One of the things I like best about this book is that it emphasizes doing the work needed to learn the material. I am a fan of the ’see one, do one, teach one’ school of learning and this book fits that methodology perfectly. There may be thicker, wordier and more comprehensive books on Ajax but I am willing to bet (figure of speech, please, no offers to wager are actually intended!) that none of them will do as good a job as Ajax on Java did for me.

Brings responsiveness to your Java web applications
With Ajax, you can build web applications that have the responsiveness of rich applications, without the overhead of keeping the user current with the latest software. This narrows the gap between a rich client application and a thin, browser-based one. This book introduces you to Ajax by illustrating how to create Ajax applications in a server-side Java environment: how to add Ajax features to servlet-based applications, JSPs, and JSF applications. The reader should be a Java programmer with web application experience. It is assumed you have some experience with Java servlets, HTML, and JavaScript. Some experience with XML parsing is helpful, but not necessary. Struts and JavaServer Faces are mentioned in the later chapters, and to understand those chapters you should understand those technologies too. The following is a description of the book by chapter:

Chapter 1. Setup - Shows how to set up the environment for developing and deploying the Ajax examples in this book. It specifically shows you how to install Apache Ant and the servlet container, Tomcat.

Chapter 2. JavaScript for Ajax - Ajax boils down to using JavaScript to interact directly with the web server, avoiding the submit/response cycle all too familiar to web users. The chapter begins with the complete HTML and JavaScript code for your first application, a simple web page that displays the decimal value of any character. This example is then broken apart and examined.

Chapter 3. A Simple Ajax Servlet - This chapter focuses on the backend of what was written in the previous chapter: the Java servlet that provides the client with the information it needs.

Chapter 4. XML and JSON for Ajax - Illustrates how easy it is to use XML with Ajax to parse the data coming from the server. It will also demonstrate how to use JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), a native JavaScript data representation that you may find more convenient than XML.

Chapter 5. Getting Useful Data - Deals with the ubiquitous Order-entry application using Google Suggest as a model. You learn to write web applications that tell users immediately when they have requested usernames that are already in use, that fill in a city and state automatically on the basis of a zip code, and that make it simpler to enter names (product names, customer names, etc.) that are already in the database.

Chapter 6. Ajax Libraries and Toolkits - Looks at a number of frameworks that exist now to simplify the task of creating Ajax applications. Up until now, the book used XMLHttpRequest to send requests to the server, and set up callback methods to intercept the responses coming back from the server. That portion of the code can be made more resilient by using an Ajax toolkit or library that can help build the request object and set up the callback function. Using a toolkit also eliminates the separate code that handles Internet Explorer and the other browsers. The toolkits examined in this chapter are the Dojo Toolkit, Rico Toolkit, DWR Toolkit, Scriptaculous, and Prototype.

Chapter 7. Ajax Tags - In the two previous chapters, you developed code that enabled you to look up city and state information based on a user-entered zip code. Next the book shows how to add this feature to a tag library, encapsulating the details of the Ajax code.

Chapter 8. Ajax on Struts - Struts is one of the most mature and widely used Model-View-Controller (MVC) frameworks for Java web applications. This chapter investigates two approaches to adding Ajax features to Struts applications: using Struts-Layout, which implements some Ajax features, and using the DWR library (introduced in Chapter 6) within Struts applications. This chapter isn’t a tutorial on or introduction to Struts.

Chapter 9. JavaServer Faces and Ajax - JavaServer Faces (JSF) is a user interface framework that runs on a Java application server and renders a user interface to a client. JavaServer Faces provides a clean separation between the business logic and presentation layers by establishing a one-to-one mapping between HTTP requests and components. This chapter presents one way to add Ajax to a JSF application: using a custom JSF component. The Ajax request is shown being processed through the viewpoint of the JSF lifecycle.

Chapter 10. Google Web Toolkit (GWT) - This toolkit represents a completely new way of building Ajax applications: rather than writing HTML or JSPs, or JSF pages and JavaScript, with Java servlets or JSF components to handle the server side of the application, GWT lets you write the whole application, from client to server, in Java. It generates all the JavaScript automatically, based on the Java code you write. You still need to write some HTML, but GWT provides skeleton HTML as a starting point. GWT also handles all cross-browser issues for you. It also provides hooks for full round-trip debugging so you can debug the client code and the server code all with one IDE. This chapter provides a tutorial for using this cutting-edge toolkit.

I thought this book did a good job of showing how Ajax technology can make Java web applications more responsive. Just remember that if you are not familiar with technologies such as JavaServer Faces, Struts, or XML, you will need some outside sources on these topics as no tutorial is included.

Brings responsiveness to your Java web applications
With Ajax, you can build web applications that have a quick response but lack the overhead of keeping the user current with the latest software. This book introduces you to Ajax by illustrating how to create such responsive applications on the server side in a Java environment. The reader should be a Java programmer with web application experience and a knowledge of working with Java servlets, HTML, and JavaScript. Struts, XML, and JavaServer Faces are mentioned in the later chapters, and to understand those chapters you should understand those technologies too.

The first chapter shows you how to install Apache Ant and the servlet container, Tomcat. Next the book shows you the complete HTML and JavaScript code for your first Ajax application, a simple web page that displays the decimal value of any character. This example is then broken apart and examined piece by piece. The third chapter focuses on the backend of what was written in the previous chapter, which is the Java servlet that provides the client with the information it needs. Thus, a servlet is created that converts the user keystroke to decimal and sends the resulting data back to the client. Chapter four is about XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) for Ajax. Besides illustrating how XML makes it easy to parse data coming from the server, this chapter also demonstrates how to use JSON, a native JavaScript data representation that can be more convenient than XML. The example in chapter four returns five pieces of data instead of just one. This highlights the need for XML to structure the data that is being sent from server to client.

Next, the book deals with the ubiquitous Order-entry application using Google Suggest as a model. You learn to write web applications that tell users immediately when they have requested usernames that are already in use, that fill in a city and state automatically on the basis of a zip code, and that make it simpler to enter the names of entities that already exist in the database. Up to this point in the book, XMLHttpRequest has been used to send requests to the server and set up callback methods to intercept the responses coming back from the server. Next the book uses ready-made libraries and toolkits to build the request object and set up the callback function. Using a toolkit also eliminates the separate code that handles Internet Explorer and the other browsers. The toolkits examined are the Dojo Toolkit, Rico Toolkit, DWR Toolkit, Scriptaculous, and Prototype. In chapters five and six, code was developed that enabled the finding of city and state information based on a user-entered zip code. Next the book shows how to add this feature to a tag library, encapsulating the details of the Ajax code.

Chapter eight investigates two approaches to adding Ajax features to Struts applications. One uses Struts-Layout, which implements some Ajax features. The second method uses the DWR library that was first introduced in chapter six. This chapter isn’t a tutorial on or introduction to Struts, though. Next, the book turns to the subject of JavaServer Faces (JSF) and presents one way to add Ajax to a JSF application by using a custom JSF component. The Ajax request is shown being processed from the viewpoint of the JSF lifecycle. Instead of writing HTML or JSPs, or JSF pages combined with JavaScript, with Java servlets or JSF components to handle the server side of the application, the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) lets you write the whole application, from client to server, in Java. It generates all the JavaScript automatically, based on the Java code you write. You still need to write some HTML, but GWT provides skeleton HTML as a starting point. GWT also handles all cross-browser issues for you. It also eases the chore of debugging. This chapter provides a pretty good tutorial for the GWT.

I thought this book did a good job of showing how Ajax technology can make Java web applications more responsive. Just remember that if you are not familiar with technologies such as JavaServer Faces, Struts, or XML, you will need some outside sources on these topics as no tutorial is included.