Wow, this is something to get excited about. Someone has bundled up AJAX in a pretty package easy to use with ColdFusion!

Check it out: CFAJAX.

For those of you unaware, AJAX is Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Imagine the dynamic capability of JavaScript, but with the power of your server-side functionality in ColdFusion. That’s what CFAJAX will give you!

For instance, in the past, if you wanted a list of information that would dynamically change depending on user input, what would you do? Your ColdFusion page would load ALL the information into the page, and you’d use JavaScript to filter/display the information. This can be slow if the data is large, or if it takes a long time for your server to process it in one large clump. With CFAJAX, you can create just the shell of the page, and your AJAX code would pull the appropriate data from ColdFusion, based on user input, as needed. It is not dissimilar to Flash remoting, except without having to use Flash!

I am excited about this. I can already think of an app where this will be useful. I have an app that, depending on which user is logged in, may have a page that loads extremely slow, because it has to pull a lot of data, all of which is hidden based on default form options. So it seems like a needlessly slow-loading page. However, I had to load the data into the page, because if the user unchecks a certain checkbox, this list of information must be displayed. With AJAX, I don’t have to load the information; I can wait until the user unchecks the checkbox, and THEN load the information at that point, but without having to do a screen refresh. Can’t wait to do this next week.