July 11, 2008

What Is Dojo And Why Is It Important To The ArcGIS 9.3 JavaScript API?

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A few have been asking questions about the Dojo toolkit and how it relates to the ArcGIS 9.3 JavaScript API. The ArcGIS 9.3 JavaScript API is built on top of Dojo.

The ArcGIS Server Development Blog has a great article that explains what Dojo is and what you need to know when going about building ArcGIS 9.3 JavaScript API applications.

Some of the questions that I thought might be of interest.

What is Dojo?

Dojo is a toolkit that helps you write more robust and performant JavaScript code. JavaScript is a language that runs within the Web browser, and there are various flavors of Web browser that interpret the JavaScript in slightly different ways.

What does it mean that the ArcGIS JavaScript API is built on top of Dojo?

The ESRI developers who created the ArcGIS JavaScript API used Dojo to simplify their development process (Why reinvent things that work?) and to ensure that the applications you build behave the same in different browsers.

How do I get Dojo? Do I have to install it?

Dojo is included with the ArcGIS JavaScript API. When you include this script tag referencing the ArcGIS JavaScript API, you get access to the full Dojo tookit version 1.1.0:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/arcgis/?v=1"></script>

Do the ESRI Web ADFs use Dojo?

At 9.3, ESRI’s .NET Web Application Developer Framework (ADF) contains a JavaScript library which should not be confused with the ArcGIS JavaScript API. The .NET Web ADF JavaScript library is dependent on the ASP.NET AJAX JavaScript Library and does not use Dojo.

The full questions and answers can be found on the ArcGIS Server Development Blog here: http://blogs.esri.com/dev/…

Great write up! Hopefully this will give users out there more of an understand of what the Dojo toolkit is and how it relates to ArcGIS 9.3 JavaScript API.

One Response To What Is Dojo And Why Is It Important To The ArcGIS 9.3 JavaScript API?

  1. Rob Coup says:
    October 7, 2008 at 11:50 PM

    Dojo is a really powerful toolkit for creating dynamic web apps… if you’re using ESRI’s API anyway you have the guts of it sitting there already.

    Check out http://dojocampus.org/ for some nice demos, tutorials and articles on getting started with Dojo. There are also three books recently released on Dojo, as well as our forums, mailing lists, and the #dojo IRC channel ready to help you out :)