Tip of the Iceberg

Category domino
At Ben's request, here's a very basic example of how I've put AJAX to use within the Notes client: a ZIP code lookup.

Suppose you have a form that asks the author to populate address information. To save them a few keystrokes, you can make a quick AJAX call to obtain the city and state and populate them automatically. This is easier to implement than you might expect:

1. Paste the following into the JS Header section of the form (or include in a JavaScript library inserted into the JS Header as a resource):

var gstrCity;

var gstrState;

var gvarXMLApp;



function getCityState(pstrZipCode) {

    var strServiceURL;

    var gvarXMLApp;

    loadXMLDoc();

    strServiceURL = "http://www.webservicex.net/uszip.asmx/GetInfoByZIP?USZip=" + pstrZipCode;

    gvarXMLApp.open("GET", strServiceURL, true);

    gstrCity = gvarXMLApp.getElementsByTagName("CITY");

    gstrState = gvarXMLApp.getElementsByTagName("STATE");

}



function loadXMLDoc() {

    gvarXMLApp = false;

// branch for native XMLHttpRequest object

    if(window.XMLHttpRequest) {

            try {

            gvarXMLApp = new XMLHttpRequest();

        } catch(e) {

            gvarXMLApp = false;

        }

// branch for IE/Windows ActiveX version

    } else if(window.ActiveXObject) {

            try {

                    gvarXMLApp = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");

        } catch(e) {

            try {

                gvarXMLApp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");

            } catch(e) {

                gvarXMLApp = false;

            }

        }

    }

}

2. Paste the following into the onBlur event of the ZIP code field:

var strZIPCode = document.forms[0].elements("ZipCode").value; 

if (strZIPCode != "") { 

     getCityState(strZIPCode); 

     document.forms[0].elements("City").value = gstrCity; 

     document.forms[0].elements("State").value = gstrState; 

} 

3. Replace the element names above with the actual field names that you're using on the form.