Usare XMLHttpRequest

XMLHttpRequest permette di inviare richieste HTTP un compito veramente semplice.  Basta creare un'istanza dell'oggetto, aprire una URL ed inviare la richiesta. Lo stato HTTP della risposta, così come i suoi contenuti, sono disponibili all'interno dell'oggetto dato in risposta quando la transizione è completata. Questa pagina illustra alcuni dei più comuni e oscuri casi d'uso di questo potente oggetto JavaScript.

function reqListener () {
  console.log(this.responseText);
}

var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
oReq.onload = reqListener;
oReq.open("get", "yourFile.txt", true);
oReq.send();

Tipi di Richieste

Una richiesta inviata con XMLHttpRequest può essere restituita in due modi, sincrona o asincrona. Il tipo di richiesta viene deciso dall'argomento opzionale async (il terzo argomento) che viene impostato nel metodo open() di XMLHttpRequest. If this argument is true or not specified, the XMLHttpRequest is processed asynchronously, otherwise the process is handled synchronously. A detailed discussion and demonstrations of these two types of requests can be found on the synchronous and asynchronous requests page. In general, you should rarely if ever use synchronous requests.

Handling responses

There are several types of response attributes defined by the W3C specification for XMLHttpRequest.  These tell the client making the XMLHttpRequest important information about the status of the response. Some cases where dealing with non-text response types may involve some manipulation and analysis as outlined in the following sections.

Analyzing and manipulating the responseXML property

If you use XMLHttpRequest to get the content of a remote XML document, the responseXML property will be a DOM Object containing a parsed XML document, which can be hard to manipulate and analyze. There are four primary ways of analyzing this XML document:

1. Using XPath to address (point to) parts of it.
2. Using JXON to convert it into a JavaScript Object tree.
3. Manually Parsing and serializing XML to strings or objects.
4. Using XMLSerializer to serialize DOM trees to strings or to files.
5. RegExp can be used if you always know the content of the XML document beforehand. You might want to remove line breaks, if you use RegExp to scan with regard to linebreaks. However, this method is a "last resort" since if the XML code changes slightly, the method will likely fail.

Analyzing and manipulating a responseText property containing an HTML document

If you use XMLHttpRequest to get the content of a remote HTML webpage, the responseText property is a string containing a "soup" of all the HTML tags, which can be hard to manipulate and analyze. There are three primary ways of analyzing this HTML soup string:

1. Use the XMLHttpRequest.responseXML property.
2. Inject the content into the body of a document fragment via fragment.body.innerHTML and traverse the DOM of the fragment.
3. RegExp can be used if you always know the content of the HTML responseText beforehand. You might want to remove line breaks, if you use RegExp to scan with regard to linebreaks. However, this method is a "last resort" since if the HTML code changes slightly, the method will likely fail.

Handling binary data

Although XMLHttpRequest is most commonly used to send and receive textual data, it can be used to send and receive binary content. There are several well tested methods for coercing the response of an XMLHttpRequest into sending binary data. These involve utilizing the .overrideMimeType() method on the XMLHttpRequest object and is a workable solution.

var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
oReq.open("GET", url, true);
// retrieve data unprocessed as a binary string
oReq.overrideMimeType("text/plain; charset=x-user-defined");
/* ... */

The XMLHttpRequest Level 2 Specification adds new responseType attributes which make sending and receiving binary data much easier.

var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();

oReq.open("GET", url, true);
oReq.responseType = "arraybuffer";
oReq.onload = function(e) {
  var arraybuffer = oReq.response; // not responseText
  /* ... */
}
oReq.send();

For more examples check out the Sending and Receiving Binary Data page

Monitoring progress

XMLHttpRequest provides the ability to listen to various events that can occur while the request is being processed. This includes periodic progress notifications, error notifications, and so forth.

Support for DOM progress event monitoring of XMLHttpRequest transfers follows the Web API specification for progress events: these events implement the ProgressEvent interface.

var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();

oReq.addEventListener("progress", updateProgress, false);
oReq.addEventListener("load", transferComplete, false);
oReq.addEventListener("error", transferFailed, false);
oReq.addEventListener("abort", transferCanceled, false);

oReq.open();

// ...

// progress on transfers from the server to the client (downloads)
function updateProgress (oEvent) {
  if (oEvent.lengthComputable) {
    var percentComplete = oEvent.loaded / oEvent.total;
    // ...
  } else {
    // Unable to compute progress information since the total size is unknown
  }
}

function transferComplete(evt) {
  alert("The transfer is complete.");
}

function transferFailed(evt) {
  alert("An error occurred while transferring the file.");
}

function transferCanceled(evt) {
  alert("The transfer has been canceled by the user.");
}

Lines 3-6 add event listeners for the various events that are sent while performing a data transfer using XMLHttpRequest.

The progress event handler, specified by the updateProgress() function in this example, receives the total number of bytes to transfer as well as the number of bytes transferred so far in the event's total and loaded fields.  However, if the lengthComputable field is false, the total length is not known and will be zero.

Progress events exist for both download and upload transfers. The download events are fired on the XMLHttpRequest object itself, as shown in the above sample. The upload events are fired on the XMLHttpRequest.upload object, as shown below:

var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();

oReq.upload.addEventListener("progress", updateProgress, false);
oReq.upload.addEventListener("load", transferComplete, false);
oReq.upload.addEventListener("error", transferFailed, false);
oReq.upload.addEventListener("abort", transferCanceled, false);

oReq.open();

One can also detect all three load-ending conditions (abort, load, or error) using the loadend event:

req.addEventListener("loadend", loadEnd, false);

function loadEnd(e) {
  alert("The transfer finished (although we don't know if it succeeded or not).");
} 

Note that there's no way to be certain from the information received by the loadend event as to which condition caused the operation to terminate; however, you can use this to handle tasks that need to be performed in all end-of-transfer scenarios.

Submitting forms and uploading files

Instances of XMLHttpRequest can be used to submit forms in two ways:

• using nothing but AJAX
• using the FormData API

The second way (using the FormData API) is the simplest and the fastest, but has the disadvantage that the data collected can not be stringified.
The first way is instead the most complex but also lends itself to be the most flexible and powerful.

Using nothing but XMLHttpRequest

Submitting forms without the FormData API does not require other APIs, except that, only if you want to upload one or more files, the FileReader API.

A brief introduction to the submit methods

An html <form> can be sent in four ways:

• using the POST method and setting the enctype attribute to application/x-www-form-urlencoded (default);
• using the POST method and setting the enctype attribute to text/plain;
• using the POST method and setting the enctype attribute to multipart/form-data;
• using the GET method (in this case the enctype attribute will be ignored).

Now, consider to submit a form containing only two fields, named foo and baz. If you are using the POST method, the server will receive a string similar to one of the following three ones depending on the encoding type you are using:

• Method: POST; Encoding type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded (default):

  Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
  
  foo=bar&baz=The+first+line.%0D%0AThe+second+line.%0D%0A

• Method: POST; Encoding type: text/plain:

  Content-Type: text/plain
  
  foo=bar
  baz=The first line.
  The second line.

• Method: POST; Encoding type: multipart/form-data:

  Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=---------------------------314911788813839
  
  -----------------------------314911788813839
  Content-Disposition: form-data; name="foo"
  
  bar
  -----------------------------314911788813839
  Content-Disposition: form-data; name="baz"
  
  The first line.
  The second line.
  
  -----------------------------314911788813839--

Instead, if you are using the GET method, a string like the following will be simply added to the URL:

?foo=bar&baz=The%20first%20line.%0AThe%20second%20line.

A little vanilla framework

All these things are done automatically by the web browser whenever you submit a <form>. But if you want to do the same things using JavaScript you have to instruct the interpreter about all things. So, how to send forms in pure AJAX is too complex to be explained in detail here. For this reason we posted here a complete (but still didactic) framework, which is able to use all the four ways of submit and, also, to upload files:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Sending forms with pure AJAX &ndash; MDN</title>
<script type="text/javascript">

"use strict";

/*\
|*|
|*|  :: XMLHttpRequest.prototype.sendAsBinary() Polyfill ::
|*|
|*|  https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/XMLHttpRequest#sendAsBinary()
\*/

if (!XMLHttpRequest.prototype.sendAsBinary) {
  XMLHttpRequest.prototype.sendAsBinary = function(sData) {
    var nBytes = sData.length, ui8Data = new Uint8Array(nBytes);
    for (var nIdx = 0; nIdx < nBytes; nIdx++) {
      ui8Data[nIdx] = sData.charCodeAt(nIdx) & 0xff;
    }
    /* send as ArrayBufferView...: */
    this.send(ui8Data);
    /* ...or as ArrayBuffer (legacy)...: this.send(ui8Data.buffer); */
  };
}

/*\
|*|
|*|  :: AJAX Form Submit Framework ::
|*|
|*|  https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/XMLHttpRequest/Using_XMLHttpRequest
|*|
|*|  This framework is released under the GNU Public License, version 3 or later.
|*|  https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0-standalone.html
|*|
|*|  Syntax:
|*|
|*|   AJAXSubmit(HTMLFormElement);
\*/

var AJAXSubmit = (function () {

  function ajaxSuccess () {
    /* console.log("AJAXSubmit - Success!"); */
    alert(this.responseText);
    /* you can get the serialized data through the "submittedData" custom property: */
    /* alert(JSON.stringify(this.submittedData)); */
  }

  function submitData (oData) {
    /* the AJAX request... */
    var oAjaxReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
    oAjaxReq.submittedData = oData;
    oAjaxReq.onload = ajaxSuccess;
    if (oData.technique === 0) {
      /* method is GET */
      oAjaxReq.open("get", oData.receiver.replace(/(?:\?.*)?$/, oData.segments.length > 0 ? "?" + oData.segments.join("&") : ""), true);
      oAjaxReq.send(null);
    } else {
      /* method is POST */
      oAjaxReq.open("post", oData.receiver, true);
      if (oData.technique === 3) {
        /* enctype is multipart/form-data */
        var sBoundary = "---------------------------" + Date.now().toString(16);
        oAjaxReq.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "multipart\/form-data; boundary=" + sBoundary);
        oAjaxReq.sendAsBinary("--" + sBoundary + "\r\n" + oData.segments.join("--" + sBoundary + "\r\n") + "--" + sBoundary + "--\r\n");
      } else {
        /* enctype is application/x-www-form-urlencoded or text/plain */
        oAjaxReq.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", oData.contentType);
        oAjaxReq.send(oData.segments.join(oData.technique === 2 ? "\r\n" : "&"));
      }
    }
  }

  function processStatus (oData) {
    if (oData.status > 0) { return; }
    /* the form is now totally serialized! do something before sending it to the server... */
    /* doSomething(oData); */
    /* console.log("AJAXSubmit - The form is now serialized. Submitting..."); */
    submitData (oData);
  }

  function pushSegment (oFREvt) {
    this.owner.segments[this.segmentIdx] += oFREvt.target.result + "\r\n";
    this.owner.status--;
    processStatus(this.owner);
  }

  function plainEscape (sText) {
    /* how should I treat a text/plain form encoding? what characters are not allowed? this is what I suppose...: */
    /* "4\3\7 - Einstein said E=mc2" ----> "4\\3\\7\ -\ Einstein\ said\ E\=mc2" */
    return sText.replace(/[\s\=\\]/g, "\\$&");
  }

  function SubmitRequest (oTarget) {
    var nFile, sFieldType, oField, oSegmReq, oFile, bIsPost = oTarget.method.toLowerCase() === "post";
    /* console.log("AJAXSubmit - Serializing form..."); */
    this.contentType = bIsPost && oTarget.enctype ? oTarget.enctype : "application\/x-www-form-urlencoded";
    this.technique = bIsPost ? this.contentType === "multipart\/form-data" ? 3 : this.contentType === "text\/plain" ? 2 : 1 : 0;
    this.receiver = oTarget.action;
    this.status = 0;
    this.segments = [];
    var fFilter = this.technique === 2 ? plainEscape : escape;
    for (var nItem = 0; nItem < oTarget.elements.length; nItem++) {
      oField = oTarget.elements[nItem];
      if (!oField.hasAttribute("name")) { continue; }
      sFieldType = oField.nodeName.toUpperCase() === "INPUT" ? oField.getAttribute("type").toUpperCase() : "TEXT";
      if (sFieldType === "FILE" && oField.files.length > 0) {
        if (this.technique === 3) {
          /* enctype is multipart/form-data */
          for (nFile = 0; nFile < oField.files.length; nFile++) {
            oFile = oField.files[nFile];
            oSegmReq = new FileReader();
            /* (custom properties:) */
            oSegmReq.segmentIdx = this.segments.length;
            oSegmReq.owner = this;
            /* (end of custom properties) */
            oSegmReq.onload = pushSegment;
            this.segments.push("Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + oField.name + "\"; filename=\""+ oFile.name + "\"\r\nContent-Type: " + oFile.type + "\r\n\r\n");
            this.status++;
            oSegmReq.readAsBinaryString(oFile);
          }
        } else {
          /* enctype is application/x-www-form-urlencoded or text/plain or method is GET: files will not be sent! */
          for (nFile = 0; nFile < oField.files.length; this.segments.push(fFilter(oField.name) + "=" + fFilter(oField.files[nFile++].name)));
        }
      } else if ((sFieldType !== "RADIO" && sFieldType !== "CHECKBOX") || oField.checked) {
        /* field type is not FILE or is FILE but is empty */
        this.segments.push(
          this.technique === 3 ? /* enctype is multipart/form-data */
            "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + oField.name + "\"\r\n\r\n" + oField.value + "\r\n"
          : /* enctype is application/x-www-form-urlencoded or text/plain or method is GET */
            fFilter(oField.name) + "=" + fFilter(oField.value)
        );
      }
    }
    processStatus(this);
  }

  return function (oFormElement) {
    if (!oFormElement.action) { return; }
    new SubmitRequest(oFormElement);
  };

})();

</script>
</head>
<body>

<h1>Sending forms with pure AJAX</h1>

<h2>Using the GET method</h2>

<form action="register.php" method="get" onsubmit="AJAXSubmit(this); return false;">
  <fieldset>
    <legend>Registration example</legend>
    <p>
      First name: <input type="text" name="firstname" /><br />
      Last name: <input type="text" name="lastname" />
    </p>
    <p>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
    </p>
  </fieldset>
</form>

<h2>Using the POST method</h2>
<h3>Enctype: application/x-www-form-urlencoded (default)</h3>

<form action="register.php" method="post" onsubmit="AJAXSubmit(this); return false;">
  <fieldset>
    <legend>Registration example</legend>
    <p>
      First name: <input type="text" name="firstname" /><br />
      Last name: <input type="text" name="lastname" />
    </p>
    <p>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
    </p>
  </fieldset>
</form>

<h3>Enctype: text/plain</h3>

<form action="register.php" method="post" enctype="text/plain" onsubmit="AJAXSubmit(this); return false;">
  <fieldset>
    <legend>Registration example</legend>
    <p>
      Your name: <input type="text" name="user" />
    </p>
    <p>
      Your message:<br />
      <textarea name="message" cols="40" rows="8"></textarea>
    </p>
    <p>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
    </p>
  </fieldset>
</form>

<h3>Enctype: multipart/form-data</h3>

<form action="register.php" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" onsubmit="AJAXSubmit(this); return false;">
  <fieldset>
    <legend>Upload example</legend>
    <p>
      First name: <input type="text" name="firstname" /><br />
      Last name: <input type="text" name="lastname" /><br />
      Sex:
      <input id="sex_male" type="radio" name="sex" value="male" /> <label for="sex_male">Male</label>
      <input id="sex_female" type="radio" name="sex" value="female" /> <label for="sex_female">Female</label><br />
      Password: <input type="password" name="secret" /><br />
      What do you prefer:
      <select name="image_type">
        <option>Books</option>
        <option>Cinema</option>
        <option>TV</option>
      </select>
    </p>
    <p>
      Post your photos:
      <input type="file" multiple name="photos[]">
    </p>
    <p>
      <input id="vehicle_bike" type="checkbox" name="vehicle[]" value="Bike" /> <label for="vehicle_bike">I have a bike</label><br />
      <input id="vehicle_car" type="checkbox" name="vehicle[]" value="Car" /> <label for="vehicle_car">I have a car</label>
    </p>
    <p>
      Describe yourself:<br />
      <textarea name="description" cols="50" rows="8"></textarea>
    </p>
    <p>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
    </p>
  </fieldset>
</form>

</body>
</html>

To test it, create a page named register.php (which is the action attribute of these sample forms) and just put the following minimalistic content:

<?php
/* register.php */

header("Content-type: text/plain");

/*
NOTE: You should never use `print_r()` in production scripts, or
otherwise output client-submitted data without sanitizing it first.
Failing to sanitize can lead to cross-site scripting vulnerabilities.
*/

echo ":: data received via GET ::\n\n";
print_r($_GET);

echo "\n\n:: Data received via POST ::\n\n";
print_r($_POST);

echo "\n\n:: Data received as \"raw\" (text/plain encoding) ::\n\n";
if (isset($HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA)) { echo $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA; }

echo "\n\n:: Files received ::\n\n";
print_r($_FILES);

The syntax of this script is the following:

AJAXSubmit(myForm);

Using FormData objects

The FormData constructor lets you compile a set of key/value pairs to send using XMLHttpRequest. Its primarily intended for use in sending form data, but can be used independently from forms in order to transmit keyed data. The transmitted data is in the same format that the form's submit() method would use to send the data if the form's encoding type were set to "multipart/form-data". FormData objects can be utilized in a number of ways with an XMLHttpRequest. For examples and explanations of how one can utilize FormData with XMLHttpRequests see the Using FormData Objects page. For didactic purpose only we post here a translation of the previous example transformed so as to make use of the FormData API. Note the brevity of the code:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Sending forms with FormData &ndash; MDN</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
"use strict";

function ajaxSuccess () {
  alert(this.responseText);
}

function AJAXSubmit (oFormElement) {
  if (!oFormElement.action) { return; }
  var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
  oReq.onload = ajaxSuccess;
  if (oFormElement.method.toLowerCase() === "post") {
    oReq.open("post", oFormElement.action, true);
    oReq.send(new FormData(oFormElement));
  } else {
    var oField, sFieldType, nFile, sSearch = "";
    for (var nItem = 0; nItem < oFormElement.elements.length; nItem++) {
      oField = oFormElement.elements[nItem];
      if (!oField.hasAttribute("name")) { continue; }
      sFieldType = oField.nodeName.toUpperCase() === "INPUT" ? oField.getAttribute("type").toUpperCase() : "TEXT";
      if (sFieldType === "FILE") {
        for (nFile = 0; nFile < oField.files.length; sSearch += "&" + escape(oField.name) + "=" + escape(oField.files[nFile++].name));
      } else if ((sFieldType !== "RADIO" && sFieldType !== "CHECKBOX") || oField.checked) {
        sSearch += "&" + escape(oField.name) + "=" + escape(oField.value);
      }
    }
    oReq.open("get", oFormElement.action.replace(/(?:\?.*)?$/, sSearch.replace(/^&/, "?")), true);
    oReq.send(null);
  }
}
</script>
</head>
<body>

<h1>Sending forms with FormData</h1>

<h2>Using the GET method</h2>

<form action="register.php" method="get" onsubmit="AJAXSubmit(this); return false;">
  <fieldset>
    <legend>Registration example</legend>
    <p>
      First name: <input type="text" name="firstname" /><br />
      Last name: <input type="text" name="lastname" />
    </p>
    <p>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
    </p>
  </fieldset>
</form>

<h2>Using the POST method</h2>
<h3>Enctype: application/x-www-form-urlencoded (default)</h3>

<form action="register.php" method="post" onsubmit="AJAXSubmit(this); return false;">
  <fieldset>
    <legend>Registration example</legend>
    <p>
      First name: <input type="text" name="firstname" /><br />
      Last name: <input type="text" name="lastname" />
    </p>
    <p>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
    </p>
  </fieldset>
</form>

<h3>Enctype: text/plain</h3>

<p>The text/plain encoding is not supported by the FormData API.</p>

<h3>Enctype: multipart/form-data</h3>

<form action="register.php" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" onsubmit="AJAXSubmit(this); return false;">
  <fieldset>
    <legend>Upload example</legend>
    <p>
      First name: <input type="text" name="firstname" /><br />
      Last name: <input type="text" name="lastname" /><br />
      Sex:
      <input id="sex_male" type="radio" name="sex" value="male" /> <label for="sex_male">Male</label>
      <input id="sex_female" type="radio" name="sex" value="female" /> <label for="sex_female">Female</label><br />
      Password: <input type="password" name="secret" /><br />
      What do you prefer:
      <select name="image_type">
        <option>Books</option>
        <option>Cinema</option>
        <option>TV</option>
      </select>
    </p>
    <p>
      Post your photos:
      <input type="file" multiple name="photos[]">
    </p>
    <p>
      <input id="vehicle_bike" type="checkbox" name="vehicle[]" value="Bike" /> <label for="vehicle_bike">I have a bike</label><br />
      <input id="vehicle_car" type="checkbox" name="vehicle[]" value="Car" /> <label for="vehicle_car">I have a car</label>
    </p>
    <p>
      Describe yourself:<br />
      <textarea name="description" cols="50" rows="8"></textarea>
    </p>
    <p>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
    </p>
  </fieldset>
</form>

</body>
</html>

Get last modified date

function getHeaderTime () {
  alert(this.getResponseHeader("Last-Modified"));  /* A valid GMTString date or null */
}

var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
oReq.open("HEAD" /* use HEAD if you only need the headers! */, "yourpage.html", true);
oReq.onload = getHeaderTime;
oReq.send();

Do something when last modified date changes

Let's create these two functions:

function getHeaderTime () {

  var
    nLastVisit = parseFloat(window.localStorage.getItem('lm_' + this.filepath)),
    nLastModif = Date.parse(this.getResponseHeader("Last-Modified"));

  if (isNaN(nLastVisit) || nLastModif > nLastVisit) {
    window.localStorage.setItem('lm_' + this.filepath, Date.now());
    isFinite(nLastVisit) && this.callback(nLastModif, nLastVisit);
  }

}

function ifHasChanged(sURL, fCallback) {
  var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
  oReq.open("HEAD" /* use HEAD - we only need the headers! */, sURL, true);
  oReq.callback = fCallback;
  oReq.filepath = sURL;
  oReq.onload = getHeaderTime;
  oReq.send();
}

Test:

/* Let's test the file "yourpage.html"... */

ifHasChanged("yourpage.html", function (nModif, nVisit) {
  alert("The page '" + this.filepath + "' has been changed on " + (new Date(nModif)).toLocaleString() + "!");
});

If you want to know whether the current page has changed, please read the article about document.lastModified.

Cross-site XMLHttpRequest

Modern browsers support cross-site requests by implementing the web applications working group's Access Control for Cross-Site Requests standard.  As long as the server is configured to allow requests from your web application's origin, XMLHttpRequest will work.  Otherwise, an INVALID_ACCESS_ERR exception is thrown.

Bypassing the cache

A, cross-browser compatible approach to bypassing the cache is to append a timestamp to the URL, being sure to include a "?" or "&" as appropriate.  For example:

https://foo.com/bar.html -> https://foo.com/bar.html?12345
https://foo.com/bar.html?foobar=baz -> https://foo.com/bar.html?foobar=baz&12345

Since the local cache is indexed by URL, this causes every request to be unique, thereby bypassing the cache.

You can automatically adjust URLs using the following code:

var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();

oReq.open("GET", url + ((/\?/).test(url) ? "&" : "?") + (new Date()).getTime(), true);
oReq.send(null);

Security

The recommended way to enable cross-site scripting is to use the Access-Control-Allow-Origin HTTP header in the response to the XMLHttpRequest.

XMLHttpRequests being stopped

If you end up with an XMLHttpRequest having status=0 and statusText=null, it means that the request was not allowed to be performed. It was UNSENT. A likely cause for this is when the XMLHttpRequest origin (at the creation of the XMLHttpRequest) has changed when the XMLHttpRequest is then open(). This case can happen for example when one has an XMLHttpRequest that gets fired on an onunload event for a window: the XMLHttpRequest gets in fact created when the window to be closed is still there, and then the request is sent (ie open()) when this window has lost its focus and potentially different window has gained focus. The way to avoid this problem is to set a listener on the new window "activate" event that gets set when the old window has its "unload" event fired.

Using XMLHttpRequest from JavaScript modules / XPCOM components

Instantiating XMLHttpRequest from a JavaScript module or an XPCOM component works a little differently; it can't be instantiated using the XMLHttpRequest() constructor. The constructor is not defined inside components and the code results in an error. The best way to work around this is to use the XPCOM component constructor.

const XMLHttpRequest = Components.Constructor("@mozilla.org/xmlextras/xmlhttprequest;1", "nsIXMLHttpRequest");

Unfortunately in versions of Gecko prior to Gecko 16 there is a bug which can cause requests created this way to be cancelled for no reason.  If you need your code to work on Gecko 15 or earlier, you can get the XMLHttpRequest constructor from the hidden DOM window like so.

const { XMLHttpRequest } = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/appshell/appShellService;1"]
                                     .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIAppShellService)
                                     .hiddenDOMWindow;
var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();

See also

1. MDN AJAX introduction
2. HTTP access control
3. How to check the security state of an XMLHTTPRequest over SSL
4. XMLHttpRequest - REST and the Rich User Experience
5. Microsoft documentation
6. Apple developers' reference
7. "Using the XMLHttpRequest Object" (jibbering.com)
8. The XMLHttpRequest Object: W3C Specification
9. Web Progress Events specification
10.