Basics of ASP .NET Core Ajax Control Toolkit

19 mei 2021 om 10:00 by ParTech Media - Post a comment

Various technologies have evolved with time in the area of application development. Still, developers are struggling to make applications quicker, more reliable, responsive, and user-friendly.

Ajax Control Toolkit is a solution for app developers to develop reliable and faster apps. We can already see its usefulness in applications like Google Maps, YouTube, Facebook, Gmail, etc. In this blog let us understand what is Ajax Control Toolkit in ASP.NET Core and how is it useful.

Table of contents

  • Background
  • What is Ajax?
  • What is ASP.NET Core Ajax Control Toolkit?
  • How powerful is ASP.NET Core Ajax Control Toolkit?
  • Advantages of Ajax-based applications
  • Conclusion

Background

We often see performance-related issues in traditional websites due to their inability to handle huge traffic on the server. Here are some of the common problems faced by them -

  • Slower rendering of web pages.
  • Server resource consumption increased.
  • Slower response time of application.
  • Data rendering is static.
  • Only on clicking on the refresh button, the data get updated.
  • Many round trips to the server.

What is Ajax?

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) is a combination of different technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and DOM. By modifying a small amount of data in the server behind the scenes, Ajax allows the web pages to update asynchronously. What this means is that without reloading the entire web page, a part of it can be updated according to the user’s requirement.

It is a platform-independent technology that can be used on a variety of OS. Open Source implementation of other technologies is also supported by Ajax. It is used for the development of faster, better, and more interactive web apps.

Ajax can also be defined as a client-side technology that facilitates asynchronous communication between the web server and the user interface to facilitate the rendering of partial pages instead of the complete page.

Here is the working of Ajax:

What is ASP.NET Core Ajax Control Toolkit?

Ajax Control Toolkit is a web development tool that is an open-source library. It is a joint effort between the ASP.NET Ajax community and Microsoft which provides a very powerful infrastructure for writing customizable, reusable, and extensible ASP.NET Ajax extenders and controls.

For more client-side functionality in the Ajax applications, extenders are used which are the servers that get coupled with the existing server. For example, imagine a delete button. An alert message is often sent to the user before deleting. This usually the work of JavaScript. But here the developer can use the ConformButtonExtender control available in the toolkit.

For faster productivity, this toolkit contains over 40 ready-to-use controls that are very easy to use. The developer has to simply drag and drop the controls available in Visual Studio Toolbox to integrate them with the web application being developed. The controls available are Calender, Watermark, Color Picker, AutoComplete, Slideshow Extender, Modal Popup Extender, etc.

The DevExpress team maintains the ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit. The latest version of the toolkit available is AjaxControlToolkit.Installer.20.1.0. To fix the bugs in controls, a lot of enhancements have been made available in the latest version.

How powerful is ASP.NET Core Ajax Control Toolkit?

Client scripting libraries have been integrated by Ajax with ASP.NET since ASP.NET 2.0. This web development technology offers the benefits of Ajax, an interactive user interface with a programming model. This ensures that the development is easier by making it extremely simple to add Ajax to the application you are developing

You can use HTML and Javascript to immediately update your UI and generate an asynchronous request to the server. This helps to fetch results with a simple click of a button.

While generating responses with the use of JavaScript and CSS, you can update the UI without entirely refreshing the web page. While this process is being carried out, the form visible to the user does not blink, disappear, flash or stall.

You get the ability to communicate with the server asynchronously, without requiring a browser refresh using an XMLHttpRequest. This is where the actual power of Ajax lies. The JavaScript technology and XMLHttpRequest object is put between the server and the webform by Ajax. All of this happens in the background with minimal response and request cycle without the user knowing about it.

Advantages of Ajax-based applications

  • Quick and slick UI with no page flickers.
  • Elimination of constant page refresh which usually occurs in traditional web pages.
  • The performance of an application is improved by a reduction in the amount of data downloaded from the server.
  • Works with a variety of web browsers.
  • Dynamic rendering of data.
  • Implementation is easy with the availability of Ajax implementations available around.
  • Less consumption of server resources.
  • Faster response time of application.

Conclusion

Ajax is unequivocally the future of web application development, regardless of implementation complexities. Web applications can move from a batch-style approach to the near desktop-like interactivity with the proper application design and the necessary network architecture in place.

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