Question

What is the best practice to support data for asp.net 2.0-3.5 ajax web application? I don’t want to use update panels, just plain text data (JSON). Should I use web services? Or is there another way.

Answer 1

Errrr… Use an .aspx page ? What are handlers for ?

You just have to create a generic base handler that will take care of json (de)serialization (e.g. using Json.net) and then implement handlers for your ajax calls.

public abstract class JsonHandlerBase<TInput, TOutput> : IHttpHandler {     public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)     {         context.Response.ContentType = 'application/json';         TInput input = (TInput)context.Request; // Desesialize input         TOutput output = ProcessRequest(context, parameter);          string json = (string)output; // Serialize output         context.Response.Write(json);     }      public abstract TOutput ProcessRequest(HttpContext context, TInput input);      public bool IsReusable { get { return false; } } } 

This is just an example, it’s up to you to decide want you need in your base handler.