How to get the response of XMLHttpRequest?

I'd like to know how to use XMLHttpRequest to load the content of a remote URL and have the HTML of the accessed site stored in a JS variable.

Say, if I wanted to load and alert() the HTML of http://foo.com/bar.php, how would I do that?

You can get it by XMLHttpRequest.responseText in XMLHttpRequest.onreadystatechange when XMLHttpRequest.readyState equals to XMLHttpRequest.DONE.

Here's an example (not compatible with IE6/7).

var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
    if (xhr.readyState == XMLHttpRequest.DONE) {
        alert(xhr.responseText);
    }
}
xhr.open('GET', 'http://example.com', true);
xhr.send(null);

For better crossbrowser compatibility, not only with IE6/7, but also to cover some browser-specific memory leaks or bugs, and also for less verbosity with firing ajaxical requests, you could use jQuery.

$.get('http://example.com', function(responseText) {
    alert(responseText);
});

Note that you've to take the Same origin policy for JavaScript into account when not running at localhost. You may want to consider to create a proxy script at your domain.

Use fetch!

It is much more readable and easily customizable. All modern browsers and Node support it. Here is a more in depth tutorial

const url = "https://stackoverflow.com";
fetch(url)
  .then(
    response => response.text() // .json(), .blob(), etc.
  ).then(
    text => console.log(text) // Handle here
  );

You can optionally pass a second param, depending on the needs/type of request.

// Example request options
fetch(url, {
  method: 'post', // Default is 'get'
  body: JSON.stringify(dataToPost),
  mode: 'cors',
  headers: new Headers({
    'Content-Type': 'application/json'
  })
})
.then(response => response.json())
.then(json => console.log('Response', json))

In Node.js, you'll need to import fetch using:

const fetch = require("node-fetch");

If you want to use it synchronously (doesn't work in top scope):

const json = await fetch(url)
  .then(response => response.json())
  .catch((e) => {});

More Info:

Matt Walsh Tutorial

Mozilla Documentation

Can I Use

The simple way to use XMLHttpRequest with pure JavaScript. You can set custom header but it's optional used based on requirement.

1. Using POST Method: ==============

   window.onload = function(){ var request = new XMLHttpRequest(); var params = "UID=CORS&name=CORS";

    request.onreadystatechange = function() {
        if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
            console.log(this.responseText);
        }
    };
   
    request.open('POST', 'https://www.example.com/api/createUser', true);
    request.setRequestHeader('api-key', 'your-api-key');
    request.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
    request.send(params);
   

   }

You can send params using POST method.

2. Using GET Method: ==============

Please run below example and will get an JSON response.

window.onload = function(){
    var request = new XMLHttpRequest();

    request.onreadystatechange = function() {
        if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
            console.log(this.responseText);
        }
    };

    request.open('GET', 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users/1');
    request.send();
}

In XMLHttpRequest, using XMLHttpRequest.responseText may raise the exception like below

 Failed to read the \'responseText\' property from \'XMLHttpRequest\': 
 The value is only accessible if the object\'s \'responseType\' is \'\' 
 or \'text\' (was \'arraybuffer\')

Best way to access the response from XHR as follows

function readBody(xhr) {
    var data;
    if (!xhr.responseType || xhr.responseType === "text") {
        data = xhr.responseText;
    } else if (xhr.responseType === "document") {
        data = xhr.responseXML;
    } else {
        data = xhr.response;
    }
    return data;
}

var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
    if (xhr.readyState == 4) {
        console.log(readBody(xhr));
    }
}
xhr.open('GET', 'http://www.google.com', true);
xhr.send(null);