25 Nov, 2008
A quick review of Jaxer
Posted by Bhavin Turakhia
I finally caught up with checking out the Jaxer video and reading up on Jaxer. I like what I see – it essentially allows the use of javascript on the server and the client.
Things I like -
- Javascript makes it very easy to manipulate the DOM. Now this power would be available on the server too, eliminating the need of building complex HTML on the server using languages that are not built ground up to manipulate HTML
- Ability to reuse code on the server and client (eg validation code)
- Jaxer provides a “runat” attribute for a function – which can be specified as “client”, “server”, “both” OR “server-proxy”. This determines whether the javascript function is executed on the server, the client, both or from the client in the form of an Ajax call to the server. If one specifies “server-proxy” Jaxer automatically creates stub code within the HTML page sent to the client which will make the relevant Ajax calls to the server without having to write any of the ajax code.
- With the new Aptana AIR plugin, one can now run Jaxer code from within AIR applications too
Things I am contemplating -
- While their Benchmark tab states that Jaxer provides performance equivalent to PHP / Ruby (the graphs actually show Jaxer outperforming Ruby) I am still a little sceptical until I try it out myself
- Jaxer is not a replacement for PHP / Ruby / Java. Javascript lacks the extensive library support that most mature languages have. In comparison with some of the more mature languages (eg Java / .NET) one would find many features lacking (eg multi-threading, support for low level networking, drivers for every db under the sun etc etc)
- …
This is a very preliminary review. I am definitely intrigued by the possibilities that Jaxer creates. Infact it would be interesting to use in combination with existing web application servers, by leveraging its extremely powerful DOM parsing and modification capabilities.
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