Who would have thought poring over a map could be so fun? Credit a loose-knit set of programming technologies known as Ajax. It’s helping to spur the explosion of Web sites, from Yahoo! Inc.’s (YHOO ) photo-sharing service Flickr to Google Inc.’s (GOOG ) Web-based e-mail service, that help you take a more active part in creating your own personal Web.

Essentially, Ajax speeds up the Web experience, vastly reducing the notorious World Wide Wait. A Web site created using Ajax updates pages behind the scenes, sending ancillary data you’re likely to want next — such as filling in map data surrounding the current view. No more clicking the mouse and waiting for the page to refresh. Says Jesse James Garrett, director of user experience at Web design consultant Adaptive Path, who coined the term Ajax: “Companies are really starting to recognize that the Web is more than a medium of static pages.”

The upshot: For the first time, the Web has become a place for real applications that match — and sometimes transcend — the performance of desktop software. “Until Google put this technology out there, no one was really thinking of Web pages as applications,” says Sapient Corp. (SAPE ) software architect Francis Shanahan. “In the next 12 months, people will be thinking about the Web in a new way.”

Ajax has rough edges. The programming tools behind it are still primitive, so writing software with it takes longer. And sometimes the resulting software flouts Web browser customs — for instance, disabling the “back” button. But already, Ajax is finding its way into mainstream business applications such as Sabre Holdings Corp.’s (TSG ) air scheduling software.

Future possibilities are intriguing, too. Even with Amazon’s patented “one-click” buying, you have to click on multiple pages to view a book, read reviews, get to the checkout page and shopping cart. Garrett suggests Ajax might allow all that to be done on one page. It doesn’t get any speedier than that.

There is much to like about this book. The explanations are straightforward, the code is readable, the examples are relevant, and the writing style is approachable.

— Michael J. Ross, Web developer/Slashdot contributor

Until recently, building interactive web-based mapping applications has been a cumbersome affair. This changed when Google released its powerful Maps API. Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax was written to help you take advantage of this technology in your own endeavorswhether you’re an enthusiast playing for fun or a professional building for profit. This book covers version 2 of the API, including Google’s new Geocoding service.

Authors Jeffrey Sambells, Cameron Turner, and Michael Purvis get rolling with examples that require hardly any code at all, but you’ll quickly become acquainted with many facets of the Maps API. They demonstrate powerful methods for simultaneously plotting large data sets, creating your own map overlays, and harvesting and geocoding sets of addresses. You’ll see how to set up alternative tile sets and where to access imagery to use for them. The authors even show you how to build your own geocoder from scratch, for those high-volume batch jobs.

As well as providing hands-on examples of real mapping projects, this book supplies a complete reference for the Maps API, along with the relevant aspects of JavaScript, CSS, PHP, and SQL. Visit the authors’ website for additional tips and advice.

About the Author
Michael Purvis is a mechatronics engineering student at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He is a mostly self-taught programmer. Prior to discovering PHP, he was busy making a LEGO Mindstorms kit play Connect 4. Currently, he maintains an active community site for classmates, built mostly from home-brewed extensions to PunBB and MediaWiki.

He has written about CSS for the Position Is Everything web site, and occasionally participates in the css-discuss mailing list. He particularly enjoys those clever layouts that mix negative margins, relative positioning, and bizarre float tricks to create fiendish, cross-browser, flexible-width concoctions. These and other nontechnical topics are discussed on his weblog at uwmike.com.

Offline, he enjoys cooking, cycling, and social dancing. He has worked for We-Create, Inc. on a number of exciting PHP-based projects and has a strong interest in independent web standards.

Jeffery is a graphic designer and self-taught web applications developer best known for his unique ability to merge the visual world of graphics with the mental realm of code. With a Bachelor of Technology degree in Graphic Communications Management along with a minor in Multimedia, Jeffrey was originally trained for the traditional paper-and-ink printing industry, but he soon realized the world of pixels and code was where his ideas would prosper. In late 1999, he cofounded We-Create, Inc., an Internet software company based in Waterloo, Ontario, which began many long nights of challenging and creative innovation.

Currently, as Director of Research and Development for We-Create, Jeffrey is responsible for investigating new and emerging Internet technologies and integrating them using web standards-compliant methods. In late 2005, he also became a Zend Certified Engineer.

When not playing at the office, Jeffrey enjoys a variety of hobbies from photography to woodworking. When the opportunity arises, he also enjoys floating in a canoe on the lakes of Algonquin Provincial Park or going on an adventurous, map-free, drive with his wife. Jeffrey also maintains a personal website at JeffreySambells.com, where he shares thoughts, ideas, and opinions about web technologies, photography, design, and more. He lives in Ontario, Canada, eh, with his wife, Stephanie, his newborn daughter, Addison, and their little dog, Milo.

Cameron Turner has been programming computers since his first VIC 20 at age 7. He has been developing interactive web sites since 1994. In 1999, he cofounded We-Create, Inc., which specializes in Internet software development. He is now the company’s chief technology officer. Cam obtained his honors degree in computer science from the University of Waterloo with specialization in applied cryptography, database design, and computer security.

Cam lives in Canada’s technology capital of Waterloo, Ontario, with his wife, Tanya, son, Owen, and dog, Katie. His hobbies include biking, hiking, water skiing, and painting. He maintains a personal blog at CamTurner.com, discussing nontechnical topics, thoughts, theories, and family life.

public class MyClass
{
public string FirstName = “”;
public string FamilyName = “”;
public int Age = 0;
}

Click here to return an instance of the above class.

It is also working if you inherit from a class and add your own properties to the new class.

public class MyInheritedClass : MyClass
{
public double SizeInMeters = 0.0;
public Guid ID = Guid.Empty;
}

Click here to get an MyInheritedClass object.

Michael’s Blog
Passing a own class back to the server

Next we want to pass the MyClass object back to the server. The first call will get an MyClass object from the server like we have done above. Then we want to modify the .FirstName property on the client, submit the object to the server, modify the .FamilyName there and see the results.

function doTest3() {
// synchronous call to the server-side method to get an MyClass object
var p = AJAXDemo.Examples.Classes.Demo.GetMyClass().value;

p.FirstName = “CLIENT-SIDE CHANGE”; // change one property
AJAXDemo.Examples.Classes.Demo.PutMyClass(p, doTest3_callback);
p = null;
}

[AjaxMethod]
public MyClass PutMyClass(MyClass c)
{
c.FamilyName = “SERVER-SIDE CHANGE”; // change one property
return c;
}

Click here to run the test!
Create converters for your classes

One new feature is the use of converters to serialize a .NET object or deserialize a JSON string. In this example I am using a custom IJavaScriptConverter. This converter will return a new class on the client-side JavaScript that may have more properties or methods that are not returned using the built-in custom object converter (which will only return public fields and properties).

function doTest4() {
var p = AJAXDemo.Examples.Classes.Demo.GetPerson().value; // synchronous call to the server-side method

// access the properties of the Person object here
alert(p.FirstName);

// Now, we want to save it, we call the save method of the instance
// and get a boolean if succeded.
var b = p.save();
}

Click here to get an Person instance and save the object using a method from the instance.