For this project, I needed a form to send an email to the client once it's been validated and checked to be ok. [...] I decided to spice things up a bit with a little AJAX and a few effects from Scriptaculous. So let's dive into exactly how I did it.

They create their form first - a standard user info type of thing - and set it up to use the WForms validation script in PHP. They include the Javascript the script needs to run the validation and to handle sending the form's contents back out via an email.

For this chat application we'll be using two popular javascript libraries: Prototype and Scriptaculous. Prototype is a Javascript framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications. Using Scriptaculous, complex effects like sliders, drag and drop and similar features can be implemented quite easily without much effort.

They assume that you can get Prototype and Scriptaculous set up yourself and move quickly on to the HTML for the chat client interface. Some CSS is included to make things a bit more attractive, and they show how to change the IndexController and include the needed Javascript files to make the interface work. Keep an eye out for the next tutorial where it's back to the server side of things...

The new release is out; you can download it from the usual location. As always, you should read the full change notes.

This release of Solar includes new Prototype and Scriptaculous ("Protaculous" ;-) Ajax support in the form of view helpers, ext/json compliant JSON support, and a new plugin-aware Markdown engine.

He details out the changes, talking about a few things that are broken (backwards compatibility), the "Protaculous" support, JSON support, and the implementation of Markdown support.

Clay Loveless has started adding Prototype/Scriptaculous support in Solar as a series of view helpers. Although I've been calling it this in my notes for months, I wanted to share with the world my shorthand for this library combination: "Protaculous."

Great to see a project pulling in the strengths of another to enhance its great functionality even more. Adding it into a view helper for the framework helps keep things that much more flexible.

The interface is very drag and drop oriented and it uses Ajax to update game status. The graphics are very good. No flash as far as I can tell.

Their server is getting crushed right now, intermittently not responding and running out of MySQL connections. The javascript crashed my browser a couple times. Still, I was intrigued by the combination of Ajax and PHP and I liked the interface. Definitely one to bookmark for later.

The game is a bit less overloaded now, but still a bit slow. The interface is wonderfully done, and easy to understand. It's great to see the popular pairing of Ajax and PHP starting to show up in commercial applications, too.]]> Fri, 07 Apr 2006 06:52:42 -0500 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/4895 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/4895 a new tutorial showing how to create sortable lists with Ajax and PHP.

You might have been in a situation before where you had a list of items in your database that needed to be output in a specific order. These items could be anything: perhaps a listing of your favourite movies or your favourite books. For whatever reason, you want them ordered in a custom way that can't be determined automatically (such as alphabetical).

This article covers the implementation of a system that lets you easily define the order of such a list.

They use the example of a movie listing to fill out the data items. They show you both sides of the setup - using Prototype and Scriptaculous to create effects/handle the Ajax, PHP to interface with the database, and a little CSS to make it all look nice. The end result is a list that saves its status from page load to page load, and can be modified just a simple click and drag.]]> Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:17:49 -0600