Question

I want to modify the code in this AJAX example to get results from Google.

I take it out the line with the Random() method call, but how do I work with the query string in the JavaScript? How can I best do this using XMLHttpRequest to manually build the request (this is for testing so has to be manually done, as opposed to using a framework).

Thanks

Answer 1

You cannot use XMLHttpRequest with an absolute URL like http://www.google.com/....

The browser will prevent cross-site scripting. You have to use a relative path, otherwise most browsers will simply return an empty responseText.

As one possible workaround, you could set up a very simple reverse proxy (using mod_proxy if you are on Apache). This would allow you to use relative paths in your AJAX request, while the HTTP server would be acting as a proxy to any “remote” location.

The fundamental configuration directive to set up a reverse proxy in mod_proxy is the ProxyPass. You would typically use it as follows:

ProxyPass     /ajax/     http://www.google.com/search

In this case, the browser would be requesting /ajax/?hl=en&source=hp&q=test but in fact the server would serve this by acting as a proxy to http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=test.

If you are using IIS, you may want to use the Managed Fusion URL Rewriter and Reverse Proxy to set up a reverse proxy.