Introduction

Asynchronous Remote–Script Callback Invocation (a.k.a. remote scripting) is a technique by which ECMAScript code in a browser can connect to a server without reloading a page. Asynchronous remote-script callback invocation allows you to create pages with sophisticated, dynamical features. ARSCIF is a powerful framework that makes it trivial to use this technique, working out for you problems such as data and character encoding, concurrency control, browser implementations and so on (here's an example). It has the same goal of JSRS, but without its restrictions (e.g., you can exchange arbitrary data using a canonical form for object literals). Today, the buzzword is AJAX, but applications such as ERW and ARSCIF were using the same principles much before.

ARSCIF supports several browsers, as well as Unicode. The distribution contains several worked out examples, for both PHP and Java, that show the simplicity of ARSCIF's approach. The framework is distributed under the X11 license, which makes it usable both in free and in proprietary software at no charge.

Presently, ARSCIF uses hidden IFRAME elements. Following releases will use XmlHttpRequest if available.

History and Motivation

ARSCIF is a spin-off of ERW, a framework for managing databases using a web browser. ERW uses heavily remote callback invocations to offer its user interface.

Installation

ARSCIF is made of client ECMAScript code and server code, provided for PHP and for Java. The files you have to install depend on how you are going to do your calls. The Java server code relies upon fastutil and MG4J.