Uncompressing Source Files with Google`s AJAX Libraries API

Introduction

If you’re a web developer who builds JavaScript applications by using popular JavaScript libraries like Prototype, jQuery, Scriptaculous, and Dojo, then you’ll be pleased to know that Google has released a handy programming interface. Called Ajax Libraries API, this interface can be used for downloading the source files of these packages directly from Google’s servers.

To learn in depth how to get the most out of this interface, however, you may need an approachable guide that shows you how to work with the API’s most relevant methods through a hands-on approach. And that’s exactly where this group of articles comes in!

Now that you’re aware of the goal of this multi-part series, it’s time to briefly review the topics that were discussed in the last article. In that part, I explained how to use the Google API to develop a simple Ajax application whose functionality was based on reading the content from a text file, and then  displaying it on the browser.

In this situation, the implementation of the logic requires the performance of  Ajax-driven HTTP requests. This was accomplished with the assistance of the jQuery library, whose corresponding source file was delivered through the Google API.

Nonetheless, it’s necessary to stress that Google serves by default all of the supported JavaScript packages in a compressed way, in an attempt to decrease their downloading times. Thus, in this third article of the series, I’ll be discussing how to disable this feature within a sample web application, in case you don’t want to use it.

Now, with the preliminaries out of the way, it’s time to continue this educational journey of working with Google's Ajax Libraries API. Let’s get going!