[Typo3-dev] AJAX in TYPO3: call for volunteers

[Sebastian Kurfuerst]

Hi,

as some of you might know, I created the t3lib_ajax library during the
zap-the-gremlins period and implemented the clickmenu with it.

After that, I discovered that many people are already working on AJAX in
TYPO3, and we should provide a standardised interface for it.

Currently, t3lib_ajax only does very simple things:
      * provides a PHP function for outputting XML headers and the
        target string wrapped in XML tags
      * provides the possibility to create a JS handler for these
        actions

Problems I see with the current implementation:
      * it is not written in JS OO, but this would be nicer. Anyways,
        that is no bigger issue I think
      * there might be problems with non-latin languages using UTF8.
        This might be serious.
      * There is no possibility to do any data manipulation on the
        client side, this has to be done in JS "by hand".

There are lots of AJAX frameworks around, some I noticed:
      * rico http://openrico.org
      * xajax http://xajax.sourceforge.net/

I only had a closer look at xajax because it was used by some people of
the community. Things I like about it: it seems to be implemented in a
clean manner, and can handle encodings automatically, and can update the
DOM on the client automatically.

I don't know if it is possible to use an already existing library as the
AJAX framework within TYPO3, if yes, this could give us lots of
possibilitys if we do the right choice. However, until now, TYPO3 has
always done own implementations (DBAL for example), so maybe this is the
way to go here as well.
Any comments on this issue?

Currently, I don't have any time to dig deeper into that topic, however
I think the ajax library should be ready for 4.0 without being changed
anymore.

So - is somebody interested and (more important) has time to check if it
makes sense to integrate an external ajax library into TYPO3, and maybe
continue developing t3lib_ajax? The basic stable framework should exist
in TYPO3 4.0.

I appreciate all comments and hope somebody has time and is willing to
take over this task.

Greets from Dresden and good night, Sebastian