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Streamline your search with Yahoo! Web Services and AJAX

Google - not the only fruit

The XML response returned by the Contextual Web Search service conforms to the XML Schema http://search.yahooapis.com/WebSearchService/V1/WebSearchResponse.xsd. In the input.jsp add a form containing fields for application ID, query, results, and context. The form may be submitted using GET or POST, but to use a context with many search terms use the POST method.

Send an AJAX request

To send an AJAX request we shall use a proxy servlet that routes the XMLHttpRequest from the browser to the Yahoo! Web Service. If an XMLHttpRequest is sent without a proxy servlet the XMLHttpRequest does not get sent and an error, such as the one below, is generated.

Error: uncaught exception: Permission denied to call method XMLHttpRequest.open

A proxy servlet may be developed or the HTTP proxy servlet may be used. Download httpProxyPackage.jar. Add the proxy servlet JAR file to the Libraries of the WebSearchWebService project. To the web.xml file add <servlet/> and <servlet-mapping/> elements for the proxy servlet.

<servlet>
        <servlet-name>HttpProxy</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>com.jsos.httpproxy.HttpProxyServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>host</param-name>
            <param-value>http://search.yahooapis.com/WebSearchService/V1/contextSearch</param-value>
        </init-param>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>HttpProxy</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/servlet/yahoo</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

The procedure to send an AJAX request is as follows:

  1. Initiate an AJAX request from an HTML event such as a button click
  2. Create a XMLHttpRequest object
  3. Open a connection with the web service URL using the open() method of the XMLHttpRequest object
  4. Register a callback function to be invoked when the Ajax request is complete
  5. Send the AJAX request with the send() method
  6. Update the web page with the web service response

In the input.jsp, to the input element of type button add a onclick event handler to invoke a JavaScript function displaySearchResults(). In the displaySearchResults function create an XMLHttpRequest object. XMLHttpRequest is supported as a native object in some browsers such as Netscape 6 or later and Internet Explorer 7 and as an ActiveXObject in other browsers such as IE 6.

Specify the proxy servlet URL to which an AJAX request is to be sent. Obtain the values for query, results and context request parameters from the input form. Open an XMLHttpRequest request using the open() method. Register a callback function that is to be invoked when the request state changes using the onreadystatechange property of the XMLHttpRequest object. Send the XMLHttpRequest request using the send() method. In the callback function check if the request is complete and invoke the JavaScript function processResponse() to update the web page with the Web Service response. The complete input.jsp is available in this zipped folder.

Integrated JavaScript editor

JDeveloper 11g includes an integrated JavaScript editor for creating JavaScript. In the previous section we added the JavaScript directly to the JSP, but the JavaScript may also be created in a separate .js file and the .js file added to the JSP using the <script/> tag. Create a JavaScript file by selecting File>New and in the New Gallery window Web Tier>HTML>JavaScript File. Copy the JavaScript from the input.jsp JSP to the JavaScript file and delete the JavaScript from the JSP.

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