jQuery AJAX to call Java method

Question

Using jQuery AJAX, can we call a specific JAVA method (eg From an Action class)

The returned data from that Java method would be used to fill in some HTML code.

Please let me know if this can be done easily using jQuery (like it does in DWR)..Also for multiple data points in HTML, do we need to make multple AJAX requests?

Answer 1

The simple answer is you map your ajax calls to urls, which are in turned map to methods in your java code. The Ajax -> URI mapping happens on the client side (which ever js framework you are using, and the URI -> specific handler mapping happens within the java application)

What java framework are you using? There should be very clear and simple documentation on how to do this. For standard Java EE mappings (meaning you are not using any frameworks like Spring or Roo) I found this on google: http://javapapers.com/servlet/what-is-servlet-mapping/

"For multiple data points in HTML" I assume you are talking about having multiple parts of the html update. You can do this with multiple requests, or you can do it with one request. If you do the latter, the server needs to return all the data you need to update the dom appropriately.

Answer 2

It's not as transparent as with DWR--DWR handles making JavaScript look like Java. With jQuery you'll get JSON (or just HTML if/when it's easier that way). It's still pretty straight-forward, though. You'd send the Ajax request to a URL, rather than having it look like a local method call.

I'm not sure what you mean by "multiple data points in HTML" -- you get back whatever data you get back, and you can do with it whatever you want. If the response has all the data you need, then you wouldn't need to make multiple requests.