Recently I wrote about list() in PHP which is indeed very powerful when assigning variable values from array elements.

$a = array(10, array('here', 'are', 'some', 'tests'));
list($count, $list) = $a;

Actually my example in the post was not correct, because I wrote that you can pass an associative array, but the truth is that you cannot, and thus the array should be always with numeric keys. After noticing the comments of that post, and thanks to @Philip,  I searched a bit about how this problem can be overcome.

There is a Solution

As always PHP gives a perfect solution! You can see on the list() doc page that there is a function that may help you use an associative array.

Extract

extract() is perhaps less known than list(), but it does the right thing!

$a = array('count' => 10, 'list' => array('here', 'are', 'some', 'tests'));
extract($a);

echo $count;    // 10
print_r($list); // array('here'....

Note that now both $count and $list are defined.

$httpClient = new Zend_Http_Client('http://..../');
// request via post
$response = $httpClient->request(Zend_Http_Client::POST);
// or get
$response = $httpClient->request(Zend_Http_Client::GET);

However the interesting and useful thing is that you can perform authenticated requests:

$httpClient = new Zend_Http_Client('http://username:password@example.com/');
// or define it later
$httpClient = new Zend_Http_Client('http://example.com/');
$httpClient->setAuth('username', 'password');

That’s an opportunity to send/receive authenticated POST requests.

$httpClient = new Zend_Http_Client('http://username:password@example.com/');
// now post
$httpClient->request(Zend_Http_Client::POST);

Just in breve as a powerful JavaScript library jQuery wraps the ability to call XHR within a built in interface. There are several ways to implement asynchronous calls. In fact you can call either .load or .post to perform custom calls.

$.load

In the case of .load you can chain it on every returned object from a custom jQuery selector: $(‘div’).load(.. than the content of the DIV is filled with the returned text.

But what if I want a OK and Error handlers?

The .load method doesn’t give such “complex” functionality. Than the built in $.ajax method comes in help. You can specify the URI, method, data, dataType, onSuccess, onError handlers, etc.

There you have:

$.ajax({
   url : 'www.example.com', // string
   data : { param1 : 'value1', param2 : 'value2' },
   // will result in www.example.com/?param1=value1&para...
   dataType : {json|html|script},
   success : function(text) {
      // where text is returned text
   },
   error : function() { // handle errors }
});

Well of course you can find the full spec on jQuery docs page. What I intended to do is that $.ajax function gives you the real power to call different type of data types and to handle the responses in different fine tuned ways.