I'm working on a Firefox plugin which will both retrieve and send data to a http-server, but I'm having some issues as to how to do this. The plugin will detect the current url the user's on and automatically fetch data (comments, score, etc) that's related to that page from an http-server (which in turn fetches them from a MySQL server). The plugin also has text-fields where the user can submit their own comments and rate the current site.
So far, I've only coded the layout and behavior (JavaScript) of the plugin. The server hasn't been implemented yet.
Some of the user input needs to be evaluated through a server before being inserted into the database. So the client needs to connect to this http-server for sending data as well.
I've searched online and found a few examples, but none of them seem similar enough to what I'm trying to do. Being the first time I'm trying to do this, I'm unsure of how to approach this.
I guess my first question is if there are any common techniques for doing this for Firefox plugins? If not, is AJAX and jQuery a feasible approach? I read something about Socket.io and Node.js, what about those?
I'm not looking for code, but rather guidance and advice of how to do this. This is the first time I take on a project like this, and if there is any detail I've missed out in this post, let me know.