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Fetch is a modern concept equivalent to XMLHttpRequest. It offers a lot of the same functionality as the XMLHttpRequest, but is designed to be more extensible and efficient. This article explains some of the basic concepts of the Fetch API.
This article will be added to over time. If you find a Fetch concept that you feel needs explaining better, let someone know on the dev-mdc mailing list, or Mozilla IRC (#mdn room.)
In a nutshell
At the heart of Fetch are the Interface abstractions of HTTP Requests, Responses, Headers, and Body payloads, along with a global fetch method for initiating asynchronous resource requests. Because the main components of HTTP are abstracted as JavaScript objects, it is easy for other APIs to make use of such functionality.
Service Workers is an example of an API that makes heavy use of Fetch.
Fetch takes the asynchronous nature of such requests to one step further. The API is completely Promise-based.
Guard
Guard is a feature of Headers objects, with possible values of immutable, request, request-no-cors, response, or none, depending on where the header is used.
When a new Headers object is created using the Headers() constructor, its guard is set to none (the default). When a Request or Response object is created, it has an associated Headers object whose guard is set as summarized below:
| new object's type | creating constructor | guard setting of associated Headers object |
|---|---|---|
Request |
Request() |
request |
Request() with mode of no-cors |
request-no-cors |
|
Response |
Response() |
response |
error() or redirect() methods |
immutable |
A header's guard affects the set(), delete(), and append() methods which change the header's contents. A TypeError is thrown if you try to modify a Headers object whose guard is immutable. However, the operation will work if
- guard is
requestand the header name isn't a forbidden header name . - guard is
request-no-corsand the header name/value is a simple header . - guard is
responseand the header name isn't a forbidden response header name .