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End-to-end discussion of configuring Apache HTTP Server’s support for SSL.
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Configuring IBM HTTP Server (Apache++) to work with LDAP.
While REST is best thought of as a guide and not a law, you have to remember that so is, “Don’t run with scissors.”
The w3c’s attempt to standardize the de facto XHR standard.
Docs on the Mozilla implementation of XHR
Discussion of some of the issues of authenticating REST-style web services including an example of securing your services with Basic or Digest auth using Apache HTTP Server.
What I Didn’t Know About XHR – O’Reilly XML Blog
Interesting test case explaining browsers’ default limitations on number of concurrent XHR requests.
Bug 339530 – Basic auth fails with XMLHttpRequest
A bug related to supporting the user and password arguments to XmlHttpRequest#open
MSDN XMLHttpRequest#open method
Microsoft’s documentation on IE’s API for the XmlHttpRequest’s open method. It also talks about IE’s overly-aggressive GET caching.
XMLHttpRequest HTTP Feature Tests
Executable test case to determine your current browser’s support for XHR features.
Executable test case to determine the correctness of your browser’s resource caching via XHR.
Using Basic Authentication via with AJAX to access CMP
Solutions for using Basic Auth from an Ajax application sans ugly browser dialog.
Additional commentary and analysis on the ‘Using Basic Authentication via with AJAX to access CMP‘ wiki page
In my first Ajax and REST article, I talked about how the Ajax web programming style and the REST architectural style work well together. While this is true in theory, there are quite a few technical limitations of browsers’ XmlHttpRequest implementations that make it challenging to take advantage of some very basic HTTP capabilities. Case in point, observe this little gem from the MSDN page on the XHR#open method:
Microsoft Internet Explorer caches the results of HTTP GET requests in the Temporary Internet Files (TIF) folder. In most cases, caching improves performance for data that will not change frequently. To guarantee that the results are not cached, use POST.
As Dr. Evil would say, “Riiiiiiiiiight”.
I expect (hope?) that one of these years all of the popular browsers will expose Javascript APIs that provide HTTP client functionality on par with the Apache HTTP Client, but we’ve got a ways to go.
In the meantime, I found this extremely useful and interesting page by Mark Nottingham that tests the correctness of your browsers’ XHR caching. Try it with a couple of different browsers and observe the differences.
I was in Santa Clara this last week at EclipseCon 2007. I participated, along with several other Jazz component leads, in a demo Wednesday night called “Jazz in Action: Building Jazz with Jazz”. Last year, we demo’d Jazz on a special demo server, this year we demo’d using our self-hosting server – i.e. the Jazz server we use to support our Jazz development (very meta, I know). The demo went well and the attendees seemed to enjoy it; if you wish to hear more, this CRN article describes it fairly well.
Some personal highlights from the week (ordered chronologically):
One FYI on upcoming events: Erich will be giving the “From Eclipse to Jazz” talk as a keynote at TheServerSide.com Java Symposium on Wednesday, March 21st in Las Vegas.
