Beginning XML with DOM and Ajax: From Novice to Professional
March 16, 2010 by BPELpros.com
Product Description
The book remains a must-have resource for introductory programming, and a useful tool for more intermediate developers.
— Jason Salas, Guam’s Mr. Media
The introduction on XML is succint and concise.
— Phu Ly, If ..Else
Dont waste time on 1,000-page tomes full of syntax; this book is all you need to get ahead in XML development. Renowned web developer Sas Jacobs presents an essential guide to XML. Beginning XML with DOM and Ajax is practical and comprehensive. It includes everything you need to know to get up to speed with XML development quickly and painlessly.
Jacobs begins by presenting an overview of XMLits syntax, rules, vocabularies, and the hows and whys of validity. She also covers the current state of XML support in todays web browsers. Next, Jacobs covers all of the basic essential uses of XML. Youll learn how to display XML data using CSS, and transform XML data using XSLT. Youll even learn about dynamic XML scripting using the XML DOM.
The last part of the book covers advanced server-side XML uses in real-world applications, including displaying XML data in Flash, and XML-driven PHP and ASP.NET applications. And last but not least, Jacobs provides a perfect introduction to Ajax development.
Buy from Amazon Beginning XML with DOM and Ajax: From Novice to Professional
This book tries to do too much and falls down on many accounts. The two chapters on XSLT left me wondering what in the world was going on. Jacobs provides examples of how to use XSLT, but fails to explain how the code really works.
The examples are very contrived. For instance, Jacobs shows how to use PHP to retrieve a result set from a MySQL database. Then, we see convoluted steps to convert the data into XML. Then we have to write XSLT to manipulate the XML. It would be much more efficient and practical to use PHP’s object-oriented MySQL capabilities to spit the results into XHTML, or use PHP’s own DOM capabilities to manipulate the XML.
This book simply fails because it tries to cover too much information in its short length, and also due to the many weak, impractical examples throughout. To sum it up, it’s all examples and no substance.
Rating: 2 / 5
this book is good for both beginners and for more advanced people. well organized and methodical. easy to scan and pinpoint items.
Rating: 4 / 5
I thought this was a great book. My firm was embarking on developing a web service that was using SOAP and XML. We had never developed using these tools and protocols. SAS did a fine job of making it short and sweet on what needs to be done.
This books is well written with good examples and without over complicating the technology. I really am tired of books that are long and say a lot and say nothing. I feel this one is an excellent HOW To Book.
John J Krzysztow
http://www.cjk-consulting.com
Rating: 5 / 5
The book do the right job for who want to learn the XML in the context of the browser , and i consider it XML in the Browser defenitive guide , beginning with the fundamentals of XML for writing well formed XML documents , then illustrate what you need to know about XSL , XPath , XPointer , xhtml , MathMl , SVG , WSDL , SOAP , RSS , VoiceXML , SMIL and Database output formats , then illustrate how to manipulate XML in the client-side using W3C DOM , XSLT and ADOBE flash XML class and AJAX then end up with server side XML manipulation using PHP and .NET .
Rating: 5 / 5
The book barely touches XML, and when it does, it keeps comparing it to XHTML. In fact, a lot of examples are about XHTML (and I thought this book was about XML). There aren’t any real-world examples in how to use XML, just theoretical talk on ideas of use. I can understand that XHTML is the marriage of HTML and XML, but does the book have to use more examples of XHTML than explaining what XML is? Obviously I was still lost about the use of XML. The book also covers formatting XML with CSS, for presenting XML in certain formatting light. Um, isn’t that what XHTML is for? Presentation? I know XML is for holding data, even configuration files, but this book doesn’t even introduce you to such ideas, nor does it explore those type of concepts. Just more focus on presenting XML as a displayable document in the web browser (XHTML anyone?) I found myself skimming pages until I reached the end, and felt ripped-off. I was also lost on the whole idea of using namespaces for XML, which the book did a good job of not explaining the use of it in real-world scenarios. Do yourself a favor and stay away from this book.
Rating: 1 / 5