Nice, clean, simple way of getting a dataset from ASP.NET to plain HTML jQuery or JavaScript library?

Question

I know this is a probable open ended question, and I have tried looking around so much over the last year or two... maybe I am looking for a perfect place that doesn't exist! of course it's all about perception no less..

Anyway, just to clarify what I am trying to do and why:

1. I want to be able to use (primarily for the moment) ASP.NET or services thereof to get a dataset - whatever the source data, I can obviously get a dataset of rows/Columns.

2. I want to be able to, as simply as possible, get that data over to the client via xml/json/whatever, to then use in a "variety" of ways.

3. "Variety" of ways meaning I would like to "easily" bind that data to say a grid, or a combo dropdown or just simply render to a textbox - BUT by referencing the dataset as I would say on the serverside.

Now I know this all sounds simplistic, and I know there are lots of complications.. so I have tried the following so far over the last year or so:

1. ExtJS - very good, nice solid framework, but just found it a bit too much to use in everyday basic apps - great if I was building a whole application with it

2. Yahoo YUI - not looked recently, but I guess some of the concepts with ExtJS were similar?

3. JQuery - of course to get data etc, it was ok, and I guess there are so many 3rd party plugins, that a mix and match might work?

4. Adobe SPRY - ironically this was as close to getting a dataset style structure to Javascript/client, although it seemed to drop off/go quiet..? I maybe wrong..

5. I did have a very cursory play with Tibco GI and another one I cannot remember the name of! but again, it felt like it was great to build a whole app perhaps?

Anyway, I am very amazed by all of the technologies coming out, and really not biased one way or the other, I really just want a very simple way of getting data from the server, and having a basic/very flexible way of working with that data in the client without using server technologies.. I need to keep the server flexible as I may need to use PHP, or java technologies not just .NET

So again, sorry for the rambles, but if anyone out there has had a simple experience, or would like to share some ideas, it would be very welcomed!!

David.

Answer 1

Rick (from West-Wind) discusses here about fetching results using Ajax and displaying it using client side templates using jQuery.

Dan Wahlin discusses it here

and here is Dave's post about it (it is about implementing client-side paging using jQuery, but essentially it is fetching and showing data on client side using jQuery ajax).

Answer 2

You should check out Dave Ward's posts concerning PageMethods, jQuery and client side templating. Similar to Rick Strahl's approach, the idea is that you use a post command to call a PageMethod which returns a DataSet serialized as JSON. The client receives the JSON object and applies a template to the data.

With Dave's approach with templates, you won't need necessarily to perform databinding. Your template would be able to iterate through the objects of the JSON collection ala ASP.