Quick, how many Java™ Web development frameworks, libraries, and toolkits can you name? The are so many out there that it can be overwhelming just trying to figure out what does what and which one can actually help you solve your problems. However, if you are doing Ajax development, there is one library that you absolutely need to know: Direct Web Remoting (DWR). This library leverages the Java language and Java Web technologies to greatly simplify Ajax development. It has set the standard for how to integrate Ajax seamlessly into a Java web application. In fact, DWR joined the Dojo foundation, a broad coalition of popular, open source Ajax technologies. In this article, see just how easy Ajax can be using DWR.

In this second article in the series on using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to build Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) applications, learn how to build the Apache Derby database for your Web application, and use it to drive the GWT. Part 1 of this series introduced you to GWT and demonstrated how you can use it to create a rich-client front end for a Web application. This time, you'll go behind the scenes and set up the back end with your database and the code used to convert the data to a format that GWT can use. By the end of this article, you'll be ready for the front end and back end to talk to each other.

A new era of Web development is in full swing, and it is called Web 2.0. This has ushered in a new set of prototypical Web applications, including blogs, wikis, and mashups. Mashups are the focus of this tutorial, and you will see how a sample mashup can be built using a common set of technologies. This set includes JavaScript, Ajax, REST, JSON, and the Google Maps API. As a Web developer, it is important to understand how these tools fit together. In this tutorial I'll use these tools to easily build what is the ultimate Hello World mashup: a Google Maps mashup.

Java™Server Faces (JSF) 2 Expert Group member David Geary begins a new article series offering in-depth coverage of JSF 2 technology. In this installment, you'll learn how to integrate JSF 2's composite components with the framework's support for Ajax development.

In this JSF 2 fu installment, you'll find out how to combine JSF 2 with Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI) to implement an Ajaxified wizard. You'll see JSF's templating and Ajax in action, and you'll learn how to use CDI's dependency injection and conversation scope.

Apache Wink is fast becoming one of the de facto implementations of the JAX-RS 1.0 specification. The providers included with the standard Apache Wink distribution for JSON marshalling and unmarshalling, such as JSON.org and Jettison, have some problems with array representation and limited return types. Coding JAX-RS services and their client Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) applications can be difficult. In this article, learn a method for configuring an existing Apache Wink-enabled Web application to use the Jackson JSON provider to solve some of the problems. An example, with sample code for a simple Jackson-enabled JAX-RS Web service, illustrates the advantages of this provider.

In this two-part article, we will create a form validation application that implements traditional techniques with added AJAX flavor, thereby making the form more user-friendly, responsive, and pleasing. In the AJAX world, entered data is validated on the fly, so the users are never confronted with waiting for full-page reloads or the rude "blank form" as a reply. The server is the last line of defense against invalid data, so even if you implement client-side validation, server-side validation is mandatory. The JavaScript code that runs on the client can be disabled permanently from the browser's settings and/or it can be easily modified or bypassed.

Many-to-many (m:m) relationships can be tricky to deal with in a Web application. In this installment of Mastering Grails , Scott Davis shows you how to implement m:m relationships in Grails successfully. See how they're handled by the Grails Object Relational Mapping (GORM) API and the back-end database. Also find out how a bit of Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) can streamline the user interface.

In this article I’ll present the main methods for exchanging data between Ajax clients and servers, comparing the traditional Web application model with the Ajax model. I will also discuss techniques for handling and processing the data on both ends. First, you’ll learn how to encode the parameters of a request object on the client side, using JavaScript. You can use the so called URL encoding, which is the default encoding used by Web browsers, or you can include the request parameters in an XML document. The server will process the request and will return a response whose data must be encoded too. The article discusses JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and XML, which are the main options for the response’s data format. Significant portions of the article’s content are dedicated to the XML-related APIs that you typically use in an Ajax application. On the client side, the XML API offer is very limited, but it is sufficient. In many cases XMLHttpRequest does everything you need, but you can also parse XML documents and serialize DOM trees in the Web browser, using JavaScript. On the server side, you have lots of APIs and frameworks that allow you to process XML documents. The article shows how to implement basic tasks, using some of the standard Java APIs for XML, which offer support for XML Schema, XPath, DOM, and many other useful standards.

A key part of any Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax)-based web application is the communication layer between the client and the server. To implement this layer, you need to understand the various communication mechanisms that browsers provide, as well as each mechanism's pros and cons. In this article, learn to make the correct match between the specific communication needs of an application and the appropriate mechanism. Detailed examples show you how to create a communication layer that can meet these different client-server communication needs.