Retrieving XML data from a ReST service across domains with Dojo - ajax

I am trying to write a browser-based Javascript client for a ReST application which responds with XML (so it seems JSONP is out of the questions).
I am trying to retrieve the data using dojo.io.script.get but the parameter that is passed to the callback function is an object from which it seems I cannot retrieve the XML data of the response.
dojo.io.script.get({url:"http://enterpriseapp.enterprisedomain/path/to/rest/collection",
load:function (data) {
// 'data' does not contain the actual response (which is XML)
}
});
What is the correct way to retrieve this data?

The dojo.io.script.get method will inject a <script> from the specified web address. The data content from this script will be passed to your load function; hence, the content must validate as Javascript. You can't load XML into a script tag.
If you want to load XML, you'll need to use dojo.xhrGet; however, this will not allow requests to 3rd party urls. The advantage of using dojo.io.script.get is that you can use different origin address' than the page loading them.
dojo.xhrGet({
handleAs: "xml",
load: function(dom){
// do something with the DOM XML object
},
error: function(error){
}
});
See: dojo.xhrGet Documentation
If you are trying to load the XML from another website it's a bit of a dead-end. You can use the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header if you have access to the sending server.
Another solution that I have used is to write a proxy script (in PHP or other server language) to mirror the XML on the correct domain. You'll need to be careful if you do this to include good checks so that your server code is not abused by someone for proxying.
See the following Stackoverflow conversation for more about Access-Control-Allow-Origin:
jQuery XML REST Access-Control-Allow-Origin

Related

How to get json data from Server with jquery mobile?

I am trying to get the Bitcoin course from a web server.
Then we try it with a JSON from local, it works.
In Firebug, I can see the get request to bitcoincharts.com, but there is no answer.
What's wrong with my code?
$('#LitecoinMenue').append('<p><b>Litecoin: 42</b></p>');
$.getJSON('http://api.bitcoincharts.com/v1/weighted_prices.json',
function(data){
$.each(data.USD, function(index,item){
$('#BitcoinMenue').append('<p><b>Bitcoin:'+ item+'</b></p>');
});
});
The reason your code doesn't work is because of a rule called Same-origin policy. This rule requires that all AJAX requests are made to a file on the same domain name. It is not possible to use $.getJSON, or any other AJAX function to load a file from an external domain.
There are only a few options available, the most common is to create a PHP file to act as a proxy, and store it on the same domain. For example:
proxy.php
<?php
$url = base64_decode($_GET['url']);
return file_get_contents($url);
?>
Your page above
$('#LitecoinMenue').append('<p><b>Litecoin: 42</b></p>');
$.getJSON('proxy.php?url=aHR0cDovL2FwaS5iaXRjb2luY2hhcnRzLmNvbS92MS93ZWlnaHRlZF9wcmljZXMuanNvbg==',
function(data){
$.each(data.USD, function(index,item){
$('#BitcoinMenue').append('<p><b>Bitcoin:'+ item+'</b></p>');
});
});
Important Notes:
This is just an example. In a real life situation you would probably want to use cURL to get your file. You should also ensure that it is secured so that someone cannot use Firebug to send an AJAX request to fetch a big file (like a movie) or your server could crash.
As you can see, the URL is base64 encoded. This is to ensure that it gets processed correctly as sometimes there are issues when passing an unencoded URL as a GET parameter. You can encode and decode base64 strings with these online converters: http://base64encode.org and http://base64decode.org, or you can use the built in PHP functions base64_encode() and base64_decode().

Retrieving JSON from an external API with backbone

I'm new to backbone.js and I've read other solutions to similar problems but still can't get my example to work. I have a basic rails api that is returning some JSON from the url below and I am trying to access in through a backbone.js front end. Since they are one different servers I think I need to use a 'jsonp' request. I'm currently doing this by overriding the sync function in my backbone collection.
Api url:
http://guarded-wave-4073.herokuapp.com/api/v1/plans.json
sync: function(method, model, options) {
options.timeout = 10000;
options.dataType = 'jsonp';
options.url = 'http://guarded-wave-4073.herokuapp.com/api/v1/plans.json'
return Backbone.sync(method, model, options);
}
To test this I create a new 'plans' collection in my chrome console using "plans = new Plans()" and then "plans.fetch()" to try and get the JSON.
When I call plans.models afterwards I still have an empty array and the object that returns from plans.fetch() doesn't seem to have any json data included.
Any ideas where I'm going wrong?
I have had the same problem before. You should not have to override your sync method.
Taken from Stackoverflow Answer
"The JSONP technique uses a completely different mechanism for issuing HTTP requests to a server and acting on the response. It requires cooperating code in the client page and on the server. The server must have a URL that responds to HTTP "GET" requests with a block of JSON wrapped in a function call. Thus, you can't just do JSONP transactions to any old server; it must be a server that explicitly provides the functionality."
Are you sure your server abides to the above? Test with another compatible jsonp service (Twitter) to see if you receive results?
Have you tried overriding the fetch method as well?
You should add ?callback=? to your api url in order to enable jsonp

Screen scraping and proxies using Ruby

I know there are several screen scraping threads on here but none of the answers quite satisfied me.
I am trying to scrape the HTML from an external web page using javascript. I am using $.ajax and everything should work fine. Here is my code:
$.ajax({
url: "my.url/path",
dataType: 'text',
success: function(data) {
var myVar = $.get(url);
alert(myVar);
}
});
The only problem is that it is looking for the specified url within my web server. How do I use a proxy to get to an external web page?
Due to Cross Site Scripting restrictions, you're going to have to pass the desired URL to a page on your server that will query the URL in question from serverside, and then return the results to you. Take a look at the thread below and the incorporate that into your application and have it return the source when that page is hit by your AJAX function.
How to get the HTML source of a webpage in Ruby
Using a GET request is going to the be easiest way to transfer the URL of the page you want to fetch your server so you'll be able to call something like:
$.ajax("fetchPage.rb" + encodeURI(http://www.google.com))
Because you can't access the side in question directly from the server, you're going to have to pipe the serverside script through a proxy for the request to work, which really kind of depends on your setup. Taking a look at the Proxy class in Ruby:
http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.9.3/libdoc/net/http/rdoc/Net/HTTP.html#method-c-Proxy

Should I be using POST or GET when retrieving JSON data into jqGrid in my ASP.NET MVC application?

I am using jqgrid in my ASP.NET MVC application. Currently I have mTYpe: 'POST' like this:
jQuery("#myGrid").jqGrid({
mtype: 'POST',
toppager: true,
footerrow: haveFooter,
userDataOnFooter: haveFooter,
But I was reading this article, and I see this paragraph:
Browsers can cache images, JavaScript, CSS files on a user's hard
drive, and it can also cache XML HTTP calls if the call is a HTTP GET.
The cache is based on the URL. If it's the same URL, and it's cached
on the computer, then the response is loaded from the cache, not from
the server when it is requested again. Basically, the browser can
cache any HTTP GET call and return cached data based on the URL. If
you make an XML HTTP call as HTTP GET and the server returns some
special header which informs the browser to cache the response, on
future calls, the response will be immediately returned from the cache
and thus saves the delay of network roundtrip and download time.
Given this is the case, should I switch my jqGrid mType all to use "GET" from "POST" for the mType? (It says XML (doesn't mention JSON). If the answer is yes, then actually what would be a situation why I would ever want to use POST for jqGrid mType as it seems to do the same thing without this caching benefit?
The problem which you describe could be in Internet Explorer, but it will be not exist in jqGrid if you use default options.
If you look at the full URL which will be used you will see parameters like
nd=1339350870256
It has the same meaning as cache: true of jQuery.ajax. jqGrid add the current timestemp to the URL to make it unique.
I personally like to use HTTP GET in jqGrid, but I don't like the usage of nd parameter. The reason I described in the old answer. It would be better to use prmNames: {nd:null} option of jqGrid which remove the usage of nd parameter in the URL. Instead of that one can control the caching on the server side. For example the setting of
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
is my standard setting. To set the HTTP header you need just include the following line in the code of ASP.NET MVC action
HttpContext.Current.Response.Cache.SetMaxAge (new TimeSpan (0));
You can find more details in the answer.
It's important to understand, that the header Cache-Control: private, max-age=0 don't prevent the caching of data, but the data will be never used without re-validation on the server. Using other HTTP header option ETag you can make the revalidate really working. The main idea, that the value of ETag will be always changed on changing the data on the server. In the case if the previous data are already in the web browser cache the web browser automatically send If-None-Match part in the HTTP request with the value of ETag from the cached data. So if the server see that the data are not changed it can answer with HTTP response having 304 Not Modified status and empty body of the HTTP response. It allows the web browser to use local previously cached data.
In the answer and in this one you will find the code example how to use ETag approach.
If the data that the server sends changes, then you should use POST to avoid getting cached data everytime you request it.
You should not use GET for all the purposes. GET requests are supposed to use for getting data from the server not for saving or deleting operation. GET requests has some limitation since the data you are sending to the server or appended as query-strings you can't send very large data using GET requests. Also you should not use GET request to send sensitive information to the server. You should the POST request in all the other cases like adding, editing and deleting.
As far as I'm aware jqgrid appends a unique key in every GET request so you don't get any benefit from browser caching.
One way around the caching behavior is to make the GET unique each time the request is made. jQuery.ajax() does this with "cache: false" by appending a timestamp to the end of the request. You can replicate this behavior with something similar:
uri = uri + '?_=' + (new Date()).getTime(); // uri represents the URI to the endpoint

Cross domain javascript ajax request - status 200 OK but no response

Here is my situation:
Im creating a widget that site admins can embed in their site and the data are stored in my server. So the script basically has to make an ajax request to a php file in my server to update the database. Right? Right :)
The ajax request works excellent when i run it in my local server but it does not work when the php file is on my ONLINE server.
This is the code im using:
var url = "http://www.mydomain.net/ajax_php.php";
var params = "com=ins&id=1&mail=mymail#site.net";
http.async = true;
http.open("POST", url, true);
http.onreadystatechange = function() {
if(http.readyState == 4 && http.status == 200) {
//do my things here
alert( http.responseText );
}
}
http.send(params);
In firebug it shows: http://www.mydomain.net/ajax_php.php 200 OK X 600ms.
When i check the ajax responnseText I always get a Status:0
Now my question is: "Can i do cross-domain ajax requests by default? Might this be a cross-domain ajax problem? Since it works when the requested file resides in my local server but DOESN'T work when the requested file is in another server, im thinking ajax requests to another remote server might be denied? Can you help me clear on this?
Thanks..
Cross-domain requests are not directly allowed. However, there is a commonly-used technique called JSONP that will allow you to avoid this restriction through the use of script tags. Basically, you create a callback function with a known name:
function receiveData(data) {
// ...
}
And then your server wraps JSON data in a function call, like this:
receiveData({"the": "data"});
And you "call" the cross-domain server by adding a script tag to your page. jQuery elegantly wraps all of this up in its ajax function.
Another technique that I've had to use at times is cross-document communication through iframes. You can have one window talk to another, even cross-domain, in a restricted manner through postMessage. Note that only recent browsers have this functionality, so that option is not viable in all cases without resorting to hackery.
You're going to need to have your response sent back to your client via a JSONP call.
What you'll need to do is to have your request for data wrapped in a script tag. Your server will respond with your data wrapped in a function call. By downloading the script as an external resource, your browser will execute the script (just like adding a reference to an external JS file like jQuery) and pass the data to a known JS method. Your JS method will then take the data and do whatever you need to do with it.
Lots of steps involved. Using a library like jQuery provides a lot of support for this.
Hope this helps.

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