Ajax: Anthem.net

The second Ajax framework I looked into was the Anthem.net project. This is another free Ajax framework for .NET (also both 1.x and 2.0). With this one it is a bit more tricky to call custom server function from the client since it does not create java proxy function with the same signature like Ajax.NET Professional does.

But what’s speaking for Anthem.net is the toolset of ajax enabled webcontrols that it comes with: button, linkbutton, imagebutton, datagrid, calendar, listbox, and more.

These behave exactly like the normal asp.net controls, the only different is that the events are handled over Ajax instead of regular postbacks.

For example the anthem:button control has a server side Click event just like a normal asp:button has. This server side code is however executed via ajax instead of postback.

void button_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
label.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString();
label.UpdateAfterCallBack = true;
}

You’ll notice the UpdateAfterCallBack property above. This tells the Anthem engine that the anthem:label control is modified by this ajax call and needs to re-render itself. This single line and using the Ajax enabled Anthem controls instead of the normal asp:net controls is more or less what you need to do to get started.

In less than 15 minutes I was able to create a little demo application that used a paged datagrid to display data from SQL server and where the paging was handled via Ajax.

Web site for Anthem.net: http://anthem-dot-net.sourceforge.net/