What is the best AJAX library for Django?

Which AJAX library is the best for django and why?
Looking for one with a large database of tutorials, books and detailed documentation.
Which one is the easiest to work with? Which one is in early development but shows great promise for the future?

Regards,
chriss

I highly recommend jQuery. There are several tutorials on how to implement it.

http://lethain.com/entry/2007/dec/11/two-faced-django-part-5-jquery-ajax/

http://lethain.com/entry/2007/dec/01/using-jquery-django-autocomplete-fields/

http://vincentxu.net/minimal-ajax-in-django-with-jquery-post

NOTE: Microsoft also announced a while ago that jQuery would be the official client-side framework for ASP.NET MVC, so its good to know regardless of what server side framework you're using.

I think this may be what you're looking for: django-dajax

Pretty well documented. Simple api. Very clean and nice. I plan on using it more in some of my projects. It's JS library agnostic, and works well with jQuery if that's your thing.

UPDATE:

Other solutions similar to dajaxice, but not standard dajax.

• https://github.com/joestump/django-ajax - Joe Stump's solution that makes it dead simple to create restful endpoints from your models.
• https://bitbucket.org/jespern/django-piston/wiki/Home - Similar idea, but a bit more robust. You can define the data format for your endpoints (xml vs json etc).
• https://github.com/toastdriven/django-tastypie - Similar to piston, but I've had better luck with tastypie.

In the end they mostly work the same.

• Define/include some predefined URL routes.
• Register models/views/functions that will be used as data sources.
• Enjoy.

UDATE2:

This advice is super old. Should probably research other solutions.

There's nothing about Django that makes any of the libraries easier or work better with the framework. Just use the one that fits your brain the best.

Having said that, my sense is that jQuery is more popular in the Django world and is what I personally use. Most notably, many of the apps in Pinax require jQuery. Some other shared apps and code snippets for Django:

http://www.djangosnippets.org/tags/jquery/
http://code.google.com/p/django-ajax-validation/
http://code.google.com/p/django-todo/
http://code.google.com/p/donita/

Also keep in mind that the newest Django books (Python Web Development with Django, Learning Website Dev with Django) use jQuery in their tutorials.

Checkout Dajax:

> Dajax Project > > Easy to use AJAX libraries for Django > > Fast, easy and lightweight libraries > to implement AJAX inside your django > projects. Ready to use in 5 minutes. > > > Dajax is a powerful tool to easily and > super-fastly develop asynchronous > presentation logic in web applications > using python and almost no lines of JS > source code. > > It supports up to four of the most > popular JS frameworks: Prototype, > jQuery, Dojo and mootols.

I've successfully used jquery, YUI and Dojo on different django projects. There's nothing about any of those that made it better to use with django specifically. I agree with jpartogy that mochikit may fit django more than any other just because of the "pythonic" (twisted-like) API. It really depends on what you are looking for in an ajax framework.

Personally I like what jQuery can do with given amounts of code but the greatest challenge in writing jQuery code is making it readable.

YUI is much more verbose than other frameworks because it sets a convention for using namespaces, but there are shortcuts to write less code and it avoids trying to make javascript look like something else.

Dojo tries to make javascript look like Java and from my experience is pretty slow. It has some nice widgets and a javascript implementation of the django templating language (which is pretty useful even outside of django projects).

I personally avoid prototype and mootools because they can break other javascript code (or vice versa).

If you are new to javascript and ajax I'd recommend jQuery because it's the easiest to start with. But I don't expect any js framework to be integrated with django mostly because there's really no need for that.

+1 to Soviut and Daniel for good answers. Jquery is a nice framework. Besides Pinax a couple other "big" Django applications use it: Satchmo and Review Board (which switched from another framework... mootools IIRC).

Also popular is rolling your own Javascript without using any framework, for example the Django admin.

The only other suggestion I might make is that, if you are a very experienced Pythonhead, then you might like mochikit which comes under some criticism for being too 'pythonic'. It seems to be the framework of choice for Turbogears but I personally haven't seen any Django projects using it.

Okay this might be subjective because the definition of 'best' can mean different to each individual. But since you are working with Django, that means you will get your hands down with Python syntax. One notable Javascript library that doesn't get exposed too much is Mochikit. The good thing about it is it has syntax that is familiar to Python programmer (because the creator is a Python programmer). It has quite nicely written down documentation as well. TurboGears out-of-the-box supports Mochikit.

If you need to work with AJAX in your django projects with very little setup and simple to use, my offer is:

django-ajax (Github, Pypi)

Fast, flexible and easy to use AJAX libraries for django projects. Contains ajax decorator, ajax middleware, shortcuts and more.

The phrase "Best AJAX Library" is highly subjective and depends on personal preferences, existing know how, requirements of the work etc. etc.

While I prefer jQuery for (almost) everything, I know some people whio swear by Dojo or ExtJS. There might be case where you want to use jQuery but requirements might be dictate that you use ExtJS.

All said. Use jQuery. jQuery rocks ;)

Django doesn't really tie in with the client side. Use whatever you're comfortable with. Django plays well with everything in that area, because you just write it in the templates.