The W3C has released its working draft for the XMLHttpRequest object. This draft is an important step in defining an object that will function reliably across browser implementations. By defining a common XMLHttpRequest object, AJAX adoption will be made even easier and the amount of browser specific code required to implement AJAX solutions will be able to be reduced gradually as those browser makers that are relying on a proprietary ActiveX interface adopt the new standard and users upgrade.
The XMLHttpRequest object draft follows the structure currently in use in Firefox and Opera. In fact, The writing and editing credits on the draft include people from Mozilla and Opera. The features defined in the draft should come as no surprise to those already familiar with the Firefox and Opera implementations.
Features
The XMLHttpRequest object defined by the W3C's draft defines the following features:
- onreadystatechange event
- readyState property
- overloaded open method
- setRequestHeader method
- overloaded send method
- abort method
- two methods for retrieving response headers
- responseXML and responseText properties
- status and statusText properties
Most of the features are pretty self explanatory, particularly to those already familiar with the object as it exists in FireFox and Opera. If you'd like to learn more about the draft (a suprisingly short read), be sure to check it out at http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest/.