Enhance your PHP applications by increasing their responsiveness through jQuery and its plugins.

* Combine client-side jQuery with your server-side PHP to make your applications more efficient and exciting for the client
* Learn about some of the most popular jQuery plugins and methods
* Create powerful and responsive user interfaces for your PHP applications
* Complete examples of PHP and jQuery with clear explanations
* No JavaScript expertise or jQuery experience required

In Detail
To make PHP applications that respond quickly, avoid unnecessary page reloads, and provide great user interfaces, often requires complex JavaScript techniques and even then, if you get that far, they might not even work across different browsers! With jQuery, you can use one of the most popular JavaScript libraries, forget about cross-browser issues, and simplify the creation of very powerful and responsive interfaces - all with the minimum of code.
This is the first book in the market that will ease the server-side PHP coder into the client-side world of the popular jQuery JavaScript library.

This book will show you how to use jQuery to enhance your PHP applications, with many examples using jQuery's user interface library jQuery UI, and other examples using popular jQuery plugins. It will help you to add exciting user interface features to liven up your PHP applications without having to become a master of client-side JavaScript.

This book will teach you how to use jQuery to create some really stunning effects, but without you needing to have in-depth knowledge of how jQuery works. It provides you with everything you need to build practical user interfaces for everything from graphics manipulation to drag-and-drop to data searching, and much more. The book also provides practical demonstrations of PHP and jQuery and explains those examples, rather than starting from how JavaScript works and how it is different from PHP.

By the end of this book, you should be able to take any PHP application you have written, and transform it into a responsive, user-friendly interface, with capabilities you would not have dreamed of being able to achieve, all in just a few lines of JavaScript.

What you will learn from this book?

* Integrate jQuery into your PHP applications
* Add tabs and accordions using the jQuery-UI project to make your pages easier to read
* Validate forms locally and remotely
* Enhance your existing form controls, optimize large select-boxes, build auto-suggest fields for your forms.
* Manipulate images non-destructively
* Manage your files and directories
* Create your own jQuery plugins
* Write a weekly calendar
* Use a drag/drop mechanism to sort lists and create hierarchical menus
* Paginate, order, and search large data sets

Approach

This book takes a practical approach to integrating PHP and jQuery, showing examples of every point discussed. All examples are written such that you should be able to copy out the code into your own projects and see immediate results, no matter what your experience with JavaScript. You will find projects developed within a chapter, building them up step-by-step, describing the process and thought that goes into it. Minimal requirements are needed on the server-side, so the examples should work with any setup.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for PHP application developers who want to improve their user interfaces through jQuery's capabilities and responsiveness. Whether you are familiar with jQuery or have only dabbled a little with JavaScript, this book will provide you with numerous practical examples of how to improve your application.