Anyone familiar with Jaxer? I'm looking for the pros and cons

Question

I understand that this question was asked before , but it was a month without decent answers ... I look at Aptana Jaxer , and I find this concept very exciting.

Here is a brief overview for those who are not familiar with it:

Jaxer, they said, is "the world's first real AJAX server." It is based on the Mozilla engine, so the scripts are written using javascript, and you have full access to the DOM on the server side.

Scripts are placed on your pages with <script> tags, and you can specify the runat attribute (ala ASP.NET) to mark scripts to run on the client, server, both or as a “server proxy”, which makes the functions available on the client, but they are executed on the server through AJAX. It also means that you can use your favorite client libraries (jQuery, Prototype) on the server as well as on the client.

It can also be used to process documents generated in another language (for example, php, ruby), which, in my opinion, is impractical, except to help in the transition of existing applications to the use of Jaxer.

• What are the pros and cons?
• How mature / stable is the API?
• How good is performance compared to other server-side html preprocessors?
• Has anyone used Jaxer with a different technology (php, pearl, ruby, etc.) and what were your impressions?

EDIT: I posted another question about the flaw that I discovered when playing with Jaxer: Detecting objects when using Jaxer

Answer 1

I have not used Jaxer for a very long time, but here are some things I found:

Pros

• Write the interface and backend in the same code. It is especially nice to write verification logic.
• AJAX seamless communication with the server is just a JS function call.
• Ability to use JavaScript frameworks such as jQuery to control the DOM.
• Ability to create or manipulate images using the Canvas API.
• You can write your server-side JavaScript using the new JavaScript 1.8 features like Array extras and getters / setters.

against

• I found that their API was unstable (they changed to 1.0 when I tried to make it make sense), and the documentation was confusing, missing or did not match the changed functionality. I also found that it was very difficult to debug my code on the Jaxer server side, and when I had problems, the error messages were not very helpful.
• You do not get real MVC or even MVP (ASP.NET-style) separation between your presentation and your logic.
• I personally could not get E4X (xml in JavaScript), which was supposed to be a big draw.
• There are not too many frameworks for building an entire application. You start with some pretty basic building blocks.
• This actually does not give any help, so forget all the templates or reusable components that you can use elsewhere. Not that you cannot reproduce it, but it is more difficult than having it out of the box.

In general, I think Jaxer promises to be a post-processor in front of another web frame. It would be great to use Jaxer to put all the extra AJAX stuff on top of an existing site. This would make it much easier to make a dynamic site with validation logic / page shared between server and client. I don’t think I want to write an application using only Jaxer. In addition, this is young (and immature) - I will be interested to see where it ends.

Answer 2

I came across this set of performance tests .

Jaxer seems to work better than Rails, but not as good as php ...

Answer 3

@BRH: Great understanding. I would repeat all the "Pros" and "Cons" 2, 4 and 5 and your final review. I seemed to understand that they were not going to supplant any market for upstream frameworks ... but if they could do this and keep it as tough and understandable as possible, I hope they do it! I love the way they think!

PS I don’t know if this is new, but there is a <jaxer:include tag that introduces fragments to the page before a server-side script is executed, which may help in some code reuse scripts. I may have more in order to open these lines.

Answer 4

I believe Jaxer is so promising, coming from an AJAX developer here;) ... although this would mean that I have to do away with or use less PHP, my first language. :)