MvDO VS AJAX scenario...

[wmgilligan]

First - this is not related to anything Miva Merchant.

Description:
- I have an mvc page that loads.
- This page has an average of 3 MvDo's
- Each of the MvDo's contain at least one MvCall

Is it better to keep it this way or
- Replace the MvDo's with Ajax calls?

My first thought is that using Ajax means the MvCalls can run while the initial page continues to load
- Is this assumption correct?
- Which scenario is a bigger load on the server?

Or - is a websocket potentially better?
- There is no need to continuous communication, so I am fairly sure this is not a good answer.

Thanks.

[Scot - ScotsScripts.com]

I reserve ajax for interactions with the user after the page has loaded - click this, do something, display the results, etc....

When I'm gathering remote data to display during an initial page load, mvcall is my first choice because that's all I'm doing- gathering the data to get it ready for display and since there's no interaction with the user until the page is displayed, there's no need for ajax. I suppose if there was an API that you couldn't get in via MvCALL ajax might be an option, but I haven't hit an endpoint I can't MvCALL yet.

Another consideration would be if some endpoint your MvCALLing is super slow and the page has to wait a long time to load, that's no good, so in that case I might load the page and leave a space for the data, put a spinner in or something. In fact, I do just that on http://www.east542.com where I load the page and at the top there's a framework for some weather data (snow fall, temp, etc..) I ajax that info in because I'm reading some csv files that get updated once an hour (cron call to a small mvc that uses mvcall) and don't want to take a chance that they will slow the rest of the page load down.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

I second what Scot says (if that matters :) )