CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptjqueryajax
timmackay
timmackay

Reputation: 1024

Requesting data with Javascript

I am creating a micro site that uses Javascript for data visualisation. I am working with a back-end developer who will pass me customer data to be displayed on the front end in order to graph and display different customer attributes (like age, sex, and total $ spent).

The problem I am having is that the developer is asking me what data I want and I have no idea what to tell them. I don't know what I need to or want to request, in the past I have always just taken data or content and marked it up. It's a new project for me and I am feeling a little bit out of my depth.

edit:

After thinking about this further and working a little bit with the back-end developer the specific problem I am having is how to do the actual ajax requests and update the results on my page. I know specifically that I am looking for things like age, sex, $ spend but I need to focus more on how to request them.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 148

Answers (2)

Yuriy Zubarev
Yuriy Zubarev

Reputation: 2871

If you work with JavaScript, then the data format JavaScript understands natively is JSON. If they can provide you with data in JSON format, it would be a good start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Json

{
  "customers":
    [
      {
        "age": "23",
        "sex": "male",
        "dollars-spent": "7"
      },
      {
        "age": "22",
        "sex": "female",
        "dollars-spent": "10000"
      }
     ]
 }

I would guess you will need something like customer ID together with age and sex so that you could uniquely identify them.

Upvotes: 0

Argote
Argote

Reputation: 2155

If you're using jQuery you can do asynchronous data requests (AJAX requests) in the JSON format using .getJSON which makes processing the response quite easy.

You can ask the backend developer to create a RESTful API which returns whichever data you need in the JSON format. As for the data itself, tell him to include whatever you think will need or may need in the future. Once you process the JSON data you can determine what you need. Don't go overboard and tell him to return stuff you'll never use or you'll just waste bandwidth though.

Upvotes: 1

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