Friday, December 21, 2007

An open source JavaScript library: q12

I've written some JavaScript utility functions as part of my ongoing wiki/note taking application. It is growing into a full fledged Ajax application with a web server and now a minimal Ajax library which I've decided to release as a separate open source project.

From the project's front page:

I found myself needing a few common utilities as I was writing an Ajax application. Rather than use a heavyweight or verbose library, I wanted something compact that minimized the amount of typing I needed to do. This is where the name q12 comes from, just three little keys up there in the upper left corner of the keyboard.

This library provides functions for the following:

  • Basic DOM manipulation
  • Asynchronous HTTP requests with callbacks
  • Class methods and inheritance
  • Base64 encoding and other forms of data escaping
  • AES encryption
Writing your own Ajax library is also a great way to learn JavaScript (IMHO). I'll be making little tweaks as I work further on my project, it's getting quite close. I think I've probably said that before but rewriting from scratch tends to set one back a bit. Third iteration's the charm?

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