Aptana Jaxer 1.0 - The road to Ajax heaven just got official.

If you've ever tried creating an Ajax application, you've probably run into one of the most common problems that face Ajax developers. How do you get the JavaScript that's running in your clients browser to interact with your server-side scripts?

Usually, the answer requires you to work directly with the low-level communication APIs and protocols provided in the browser and to write and maintain many lines of code. PHP functions must be wrapped, new APIs must be created...

A better way

Aptana Inc have their own answer to the Ajax problem - An Ajax Server named Jaxer. Put simply, Jaxer is the Mozilla Firefox browser engine, embedded within a server. In effect, this gives developers a common ground for developing client-side and server-side code - JavaScript.

Jaxer’s full featured application framework lets you use JavaScript on the server to interact with databases, file systems and networks and provides server sessions, image manipulation, and many other capabilities typical of application servers. Once you have JavaScript running on your server, you can take advantage of some of the popular Ajax libraries such as jQuery, prototype and dojo to do some powerfull DOM manipulation, allowing you to alter your web page before it even reaches your clients browser. 

But it's not all about server-side JavaScript. Jaxer also lets you expose JavaScript functions running on the server to the web page, allowing the clients browser to execute those functions as if they were part of the web page itself.

Jaxer in action

I have been using Jaxer since some of their first beta releases and have been continually impressed with what it is capable of. Two of the most popular articles on this blog are my Jaxer how-to articles:

• Running server side processes via JavaScript with Jaxer
• One form, many uses - server side jQuery with Jaxer

And an example of a live website I have developed that makes heavy use of Jaxer can be seen at E-Music TV - Video on demand

Give it a try

I would advise anybody that is looking to deveop Ajax applications to consider Jaxer for your next project. Download Jaxer for Windows, Max or Linux and give it a try.