Navigating the Web: XMLHttpRequest vs. Fetch API

Exploring the Evolution of Client-Server Communication in JavaScript

Photo by Anthony Duran on Unsplash

In the world of web development, the ability to communicate with servers and fetch data is a fundamental requirement. Over the years, JavaScript has evolved to provide developers with different tools to achieve this task. Two of the most prominent options are the XMLHttpRequest object and the Fetch API. Let’s dive into the differences between these two approaches and understand their strengths and weaknesses.

XMLHttpRequest

The XMLHttpRequest object has been around since the early days of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) development. It provides a way for JavaScript to make HTTP requests to the server and handle the response. Here’s an example of how to use it:

const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open('GET', 'https://api.example.com/data');
xhr.onload = function() {
  if (xhr.status === 200) {
    console.log(xhr.responseText);
  } else {
    console.error('Error:', xhr.status);
  }
};
xhr.send();

In this example, we create a new XMLHttpRequest object, open a GET request to the specified URL, and define a callback function to handle the server's response. When the request is complete, the onload event is triggered, and we can…