CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptajaxxmlxmlhttprequest
Bluefire
Bluefire

Reputation: 14109

What does AJAX have to do with XML?

Ok, maybe that title is slightly misleading. But what's the deal with XML being named as a central element to AJAX? I mean, Asynchronous Javascript And XML is the name given to using an XMLHttpRequest object to fetch... XML? Not really, since you can fetch anything: plain text, JSON, scripts, etc.

So, why is it called that? My first thought is that it was named before JSON came about, but surely raw text could and was able to be fetched? XML wasn't the only thing.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 180

Answers (2)

Jan
Jan

Reputation: 1049

I thought this to be a good question and consulted the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29). Subject to the condition that this article's content is correct, the root of Ajax have its source from the

XMLHTTP ActiveX control in Internet Explorer 5, which was later adopted by Mozilla, Safari, Opera and other browsers as the XMLHttpRequest JavaScript object

Upvotes: 1

Quentin
Quentin

Reputation: 943569

The X in Ajax comes from the name of the XMLHttpRequest object that provides the most common way to perform Ajax.

The XMLHttpRequest object is named that way because, when it was designed, internal politics at Microsoft meant it was easiest to get it to ship if it was made part of an existing library and the XML team helped out.

source.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions