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Archives / 2005 / May
  • Fun with callbacks Part 3: Strongly-typed callbacks

    I got a lot of feedback after the first two posts in this series pointing out the need for a more strongly-typed communication than just strings. Several comments also pointed me to the great AJAX.NET library. I like the AJAX.NET approach because it looks very much like Web Service proxying. It's a real accomplishment as it succeeds in reproducing a reasonable part of the .NET type system in JavaScript. On the downside, it's really oriented at client-side script writing, and it suffers from the same drawbacks as Web Service proxying, namely that it gives the illusion of a local object whereas a service-oriented approach should be taken, trying to mutualize the communications with the server as much as possible. At least, the asynchronousness of callbacks makes it more obvious that you're dealing with networked resources.