How Javascript – AJAX helps WordPress developers?

In the past couple of years, AJAX has successfully paved its way into the website development. By using AJAX one can build dynamic, user-friendly and highly-responsive websites that will work as per the client's requirement. AJAX is a technology which allows users to update the content of the page without actually having to reload the page in the browser. For example, Google Docs utilizes this technology when saving your work.There are plenty of methods by which you can integrate AJAX coding into the WordPress-based website. The best thing is that WordPress fully supports AJAX, it's future-proof, very logical and gives a developer numerous customization options right out of the box. In this post, you will get to know more about AJAX and how it makes the WP sites dynamic and unique.

What is AJAX

If you are not familiar with AJAX, then this first paragraph will give you a brief info about this technology. AJAX is a combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript code that enables the developers to design a code which sends data to the script, which then receives and processes the script’s response without needing to reload the page again and again. You will rarely come across AJAX in its raw state it is usually used with helpers such as jQuery.If you are creating a page on your portal where users can modify their profile, then you can use AJAX to update the user's profile without any need of reloading the page whenever they submit the information form. When the user clicks on the 'Send' button that data entered in the form will be sent via AJAX which will further process the info, save it and returns the string “data saved.” You can then output that data to the user by inserting it onto the page.The only difference between AJAX and PHP is the way they process information entered by the users and gets back to the user, rest everything else is same. To exploit the full potential of the AJAX technology, you will need to get familiar with the JavaScript or jQuery, HTML, CSS and PHP. If your JavaScript knowledge is a bit low, still you will be able to understand the AJAX logic. In case you don't have much technical know-how then it will be good that you hire services of a reliable and experienced programmer or coder.

How AJAX Works In WordPress?

WordPress not only supports AJAX based coding but also comes loaded with this technology right out of the box. All you need to do is to use the available functions. There is a very simple process to get started with AJAX in WP.Every AJAX request sent by the user goes through admin-ajax.php in the WordPress's admin folder. This admin-ajax.php is usually used for the backend coding and the user only faces the clean version of AJAX.Each request needs to be supplied with at least with a single piece of data (by using the GET or POST method) called the action. According to this action, the code in admin-ajax.php creates two hooks: wp_ajax_my_action & wp_ajax_nopriv_my_action, in which the my_action is the value of the GET or POST variable action.By adding a function to the first hook indicates that the function will fire only if a logged-in user initiates this action or request. By using the second hook, you can cater the needs of logged-out users separately.

From where you can learn more about Javascript-AJAX

This is the final part of this post in which you will get know about different resources which will help you enhance your knowledge of Javascript-AJAX that will help you handle the coding part of your WordPress based portal in an easy manner. Eloquent JavaScript: This is available in both digital and hardcopy format, Eloquent Javascript consists of a comprehensive and properly structured introduction to Javascript. No matter you are a beginner or an experienced professional Eloquent Javascript will help you overcome any issue you will face while using Javascript or AJAX.

W3Schools:

These schools are an excellent resource for beginners, and it is crammed with proper examples. The best thing about this resource is that you can edit the Javascript examples on the live site and can see the results of your changes in real time.

Codecademy:

This is one of the most popular online code school which offers free 10-hour Javascript course for the beginners. This course is divided into eight units that cover all the concepts, functions, loops, control flow, data structure and different objects involved in Javascript-AJAX coding. Beside this, there is also a final project which involves building code from scratch but for that, you have to upgrade to its pro version.

Conclusion

This post will give you a brief idea about Javascript-AJAX coding, how it is used in WordPress development and from where you can learn this coding process.`