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JavaScript AJAX Basics (retiring) AJAX Concepts AJAX Response Formats

Raquel Redondo
Raquel Redondo
6,494 Points
Posted by Raquel Redondo
Raquel Redondo
6,494 Points

AJAX: are responses from AJAX always text? Cant responses be made of more complex data types such as Objects?

In the video: https://teamtreehouse.com/library/ajax-basics/ajax-concepts/ajax-response-formats it is said that responses are made of text, but I want to know if that is always the case or responses can be of any type.

2 Answers

Jacques Wessels
Jacques Wessels
22,557 Points
Jacques Wessels
Jacques Wessels
22,557 Points

Hi there,

I'm speaking under correction here, but I think there are two possible types of responses to AJAX requests. One is XML, and the other is a string. If the string is JSON formatted, you can then use the JSON.parse method to construct an actual object based on that string.

Armand van Alphen
Armand van Alphen
16,969 Points
Armand van Alphen
Armand van Alphen
16,969 Points

You can even get valid HTML code from an .HTML file to inject into your web-page but this is still a string, Also as mentioned above you can get a JSON formatted string which are objects and arrays converted to a string by PHP Python or other back-end programs which JavaScript is able to convert back to arrays and objects.