Javascript, API, and Ajax

Posted by Glen on Nov. 11, 2012, 9:07 p.m.

Recently, I was messing with the three all together. I realized that I should probably learn a bit more about javascript and it's uses in web applications. I've always wanted to make a useful web application on a website using AJAX for smooth transitions and API to manage social network accounts.

I recently worked with an application for twitter using open source codes and found javascript and API calls to be very fast. The speed on it's response was amazing. With AJAX being able to update the progress bar on a long script, I thought it was very cool.

I'm used to only using HTML and PHP to handle all web applications and I'm really tired of having a different page for each function or having to refresh with a posted ($_POST) variable or including he variable in the url. It seems nice to be able to do it all on one page.

Not sure if I've ever mentioned it, but I'm majoring in Marketing and Advertising. I deal with social networks and website analytics everyday. I work for my father currently while I go to school, but I manage all of his company's advertising campaigns and being able to connect to people through social networks is great. Almost all of them have API configurations for PHP and Javascript. Playing around with the system is helping me understand how the websites work. It's interesting.

The only thing that not great about the use of Javascript is the fact that it runs after the page is loaded and it's output is not included in the source code. Therefore most search engines see nothing produced by it because they hate the language. That could be a good thing though. I only want to learn it for program/application purposes. I've seen some really nice things come out of javascript programs.

By the way, what happened to all the filter options in the games and example section? We accept the uploading and publication of GM games, Javascript Games, C#, C++ etc… but there's no way of sorting them out. It would be cool to have that function again. And possibly a "program" section that's for projects that are not games? Just a few thoughts. We have both games and programs in our games/examples database.

Comments

Glen 12 years ago

Lol, I was in the middle of experimenting with the width of things. XD

KaBob799 12 years ago

My recent experiences with javascript (my last blog) have me motivated to learn more of it too.

Sharkbyte 12 years ago

I tried to +1 bob but ended up reporting him

CyEdit: Welcome to 64digits! Leave your sanity in the red box by the door. Don't feed ChIkEn…EVER! Also, something tells me that this is the only time we'll ever see you, so goodbye.

Rob 12 years ago

The report system has been broken for like 2 years though…

User was banned for this post. Thanks for reporting Rob, Sharkbyte

firestormx 12 years ago

API is a pretty broad term. XD

Are you just using one?

Glen 12 years ago

I'm using Facebook API and Twitter API at the moment. I'm experimenting with easy registration and sharing.

firestormx 12 years ago

Ah, cool

Rez 12 years ago

cool cool cool

Glen 12 years ago

Yea, and on the javascript part, I'm working on a web app that reads and analyzes statistics about the social network account you're logged in with. It's to manage the performance of multiple accounts. AJAX just makes things smoother. But, I'm finding security flaws in javascript and API access. Mainly regarding the storage of access keys and secret keys that allow a person to pull data from the account.

Javascript isn't server sided, so those keys are easier for people to get ahold of. I'm trying to make a system that uses PHP, Mysql, and Javascript as a combination to help with that. PHP being server sided is much safer to use when dealing with keys and passwords.

firestormx 12 years ago

If you don't have it already, you should get firebug.

And if you have it already, you should make sure that absolutely nothing can be changed client side to make things insecure. (eg do your validation server side). With debugging tools like firebug, you can change variables to be whatever you like.