Develop Reference

XMLHttpRequest returning with status 200, but 'onreadystatechange' event not fired

We have been receiving an intermittent bug with the XMLHttpRequest object when using IE11. Our codebase is using legacy architecture, so this browser is required.
After clicking a button, the browser launches an out-of-band process by creating a new ActiveX control which integrates with a camera to capture an image. This control appears to be working fine... it allows the operator to capture the image, and the Base64 content of the image is returned out of the control back to the browser interface, so I think we can rule out a problem with this object.
Once the image is returned to the browser, the browser performs an asynchronous 'ping' to the web server to check if the IIS session is still alive or it has expired (because the out-of-band image capture process forbids control of the browser while it is open).
The ping to the server returns successfully (and running Fiddler I can see that the response has status 200), with the expected response data:
<sessionstate>ok</sessionstate>
There is a defined 'onreadystatechange' function which should be fired on this response, and the majority of times this seems to fire correctly. However, on the rare occasion it does appear, it continues to happen every time.
Here is a snippet of the code... we expect the 'callback()' function to be called on a successful response to Timeout.asp:
XMLPoster.prototype.checkSessionAliveAsync = function(callback) {
var checkSessionAlive = new XMLHttpRequest();
checkSessionAlive.open("POST", "Timeout.asp?Action=ping", true);
checkSessionAlive.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
checkSessionAlive.onreadystatechange = function() {
if (checkSessionAlive.readyState == 4) {
if (checkSessionAlive.responseText.indexOf("expired") != -1 || checkSessionAlive.status !== 200) {
eTop.window.main.location = "timeout.asp";
return;
}
callback(checkSessionAlive.responseText);
}
}
checkSessionAlive.send();
}
Has anyone seen anything like this before? I appreciate that using legacy software is not ideal, but we are currently limited to using it.

How to check if the user is online using javascript or any library?

I need some help on how I could check the internet connection using Javascript or jQuery or any library if available. cause i'm developing an offline application and I want to show a version if the user is offline and another version if the user is online.
For the moment i'm using this code :
if (navigator.onLine) {
alert('online');
} else {
alert('offline');
}
But this is working very slow to detect. sometimes it's just connected to a network without internet, it takes 5 to 10 seconds to alert false (No internet).
I took a look at Offline.js library, but I'm not sure if this library is useful in my case. and I don't know how to use it

I just got this bit of code functionality from a Mozilla Site:
window.addEventListener('load', function(e) {
if (navigator.onLine) {
console.log('We\'re online!');
} else {
console.log('We\'re offline...');
}
}, false);
window.addEventListener('online', function(e) {
console.log('And we\'re back :).');
}, false);
window.addEventListener('offline', function(e) {
console.log('Connection is down.');
}, false);
They even have a link to see it working. I tried it in IE, Firefox and Chrome. Chrome appeared the slowest but it was only about half a second.

i think you should try OFFLINE.js.. it looks pretty easy to use, just give it a try.
it even provides the option checkOnLoad which checks the connection immediately on page load.
Offline.check(): Check the current status of the connection.
Offline.state: The current state of the connection 'up' or 'down'
haven't tried it, would be nice to know if it works as intended.
EDIT took a little peak into the code, it uses the method with FAILED XHR REQUEST suggested in THIS SO Question

Take a look at Detect that the Internet connection is offline? Basically, make an ajax request to something you know is likely to be up (say google.com) and if it fails, there is no internet connection.

navigator.onLine is a property that maintains a true/false value (true for online, false for offline). This property is updated whenever the user switches into "Offline Mode".
window.addEventListener('load', function() {
function updateOnlineStatus(event) {
document.body.setAttribute("data-online", navigator.onLine);
}
updateOnlineStatus();
window.addEventListener('online', updateOnlineStatus);
window.addEventListener('offline', updateOnlineStatus);
});

// check if online/offline
// http://www.kirupa.com/html5/check_if_internet_connection_exists_in_javascript.htm
function doesConnectionExist() {
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
var file = "http://www.yoursite.com/somefile.png";
var randomNum = Math.round(Math.random() * 10000);
xhr.open('HEAD', file + "?rand=" + randomNum, false);
try {
xhr.send();
if (xhr.status >= 200 && xhr.status < 304) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
} catch (e) {
return false;
}
}

My solution is to grab a very small image (1x1), not cached and always onLine.
<head>
<script src="jquery.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<script>
$( document ).ready(function() {
function onLine() {
alert("onLine")
}
function offLine() {
alert("offLine")
}
var i = new Image();
i.onload = onLine;
i.onerror = offLine;
i.src = 'http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif';
});
</script>
<body>
Notes:
Use a local copy of jQuery otherwise it won't work offLine.
I've tested the code onLine/offLine and it works without delay.
Works with all browsers, Desktop or Mobile.
In case you wonder, there's no tracking made from Google Analytics as we don't use any arguments.
Feel free to change the image, just make sure it doesn't get cached and it's small in size.

Try utilizing WebRTC , see diafygi/webrtc-ips; in part
Additionally, these STUN requests are made outside of the normal
XMLHttpRequest procedure, so they are not visible in the developer
console or able to be blocked by plugins such as AdBlockPlus or
Ghostery. This makes these types of requests available for online
tracking if an advertiser sets up a STUN server with a wildcard
domain.
modified minimally to log "online" or "offline" at console
// https://github.com/diafygi/webrtc-ips
function online(callback){
//compatibility for firefox and chrome
var RTCPeerConnection = window.RTCPeerConnection
|| window.mozRTCPeerConnection
|| window.webkitRTCPeerConnection;
var useWebKit = !!window.webkitRTCPeerConnection;
//bypass naive webrtc blocking using an iframe
if(!RTCPeerConnection) {
//NOTE: you need to have an iframe in the page
// right above the script tag
//
//<iframe id="iframe" sandbox="allow-same-origin" style="display: none"></iframe>
//<script>...getIPs called in here...
//
var win = iframe.contentWindow;
RTCPeerConnection = win.RTCPeerConnection
|| win.mozRTCPeerConnection
|| win.webkitRTCPeerConnection;
useWebKit = !!win.webkitRTCPeerConnection;
}
//minimal requirements for data connection
var mediaConstraints = {
optional: [{RtpDataChannels: true}]
};
//firefox already has a default stun server in about:config
// media.peerconnection.default_iceservers =
// [{"url": "stun:stun.services.mozilla.com"}]
var servers = undefined;
//add same stun server for chrome
if(useWebKit)
servers = {iceServers: [{urls: "stun:stun.services.mozilla.com"}]};
//construct a new RTCPeerConnection
var pc = new RTCPeerConnection(servers, mediaConstraints);
//create a bogus data channel
pc.createDataChannel("");
var fn = function() {};
//create an offer sdp
pc.createOffer(function(result){
//trigger the stun server request
pc.setLocalDescription(result, fn, fn);
}, fn);
//wait for a while to let everything done
setTimeout(function(){
//read candidate info from local description
var lines = pc.localDescription.sdp.split("\n");
// return `true`:"online" , or `false`:"offline"
var res = lines.some(function(line) {
return line.indexOf("a=candidate") === 0
});
callback(res);
}, 500);
}
//Test: Print "online" or "offline" into the console
online(function(connection) {
if (connection) {
console.log("online")
} else {
console.log("offline")
}
});

You can use SignalR, if you're developing using MS web technologies. SignalR will establish either long polling or web sockets depending on your server/client browser technology, transparent to you the developer. You don't need to use it for anything else than determining if you have an active connection to the site or not.
If SignalR disconnects for any reason, then you have lost connection to the site, as long as your SignalR server instance is actually installed on the site. Thus, you can use $.connection.hub.disconnected() event/method on the client to set a global var which holds your connection status.
Read up about SignalR and how to use it for determining connection states here...
http://www.asp.net/signalr/overview/guide-to-the-api/handling-connection-lifetime-events#clientdisconnect

See How do I check connection type (WiFi/LAN/WWAN) using HTML5/JavaScript? answers:
Rob W suggests navigator.connection;
Bergi suggests Windows.Networking.Connectivity API through this tutorial;
Gerard Sexton suggests Gmail approach.

You can use the new Fetch API which will trigger an error almost immediately if no network is present.
The problem with this is that the Fetch API has infant support at the moment (currently Chrome has the most stable implementation, Firefox and Opera is getting there, IE does not support it). There exists a polyfill to support the fetch principle but not necessarily the rapid return as with a pure implementation. On the other hand, an offline app would require a modern browser...
An example which will try to load a plain text file over HTTPS to avoid CORS requirements (link is picked at random, you should set up a server with a tiny text file to test against - test in Chrome, for now):
fetch("https://link.to/some/testfile")
.then(function(response) {
if (response.status !== 200) { // add more checks here, ie. 30x etc.
alert("Not available"); // could be server errors
}
else
alert("OK");
})
.catch(function(err) {
alert("No network"); // likely network errors (incl. no connection)
});
Another option is to set up a Service worker and use fetch from there. This way you could serve an optional/custom offline page or a cached page when the requested page is not available. Also this is a very fresh API.

best one liner
console.log(navigator.onLine ? 'online' : 'offline');

How to show loading status in percentage for ajax response?

I want to show the user percentage of the ajax response loaded with a progressbar.
Is there a way to achieve it?
Right now I am showing just an image.
Here is my code sample :
$('#loadingDiv').show();
$.ajax({
type : 'Get',
url : myUrl,
success : function(response) {
$('#loadingDiv').hide();
populateData(response);
},
error: function(x, e) {
$('#loadingDiv').hide();
if (x.status == 500 || x.status == 404) {
alert("no data found");
}
}
});
HTML code:
<div id="loadingDiv">
<img src="loading-img.png"/>
</div>

There are two ways to show real percentage. Briefly...
One - old school native JavaScript or jQuery ajax, for which you need server support as well, a different URL which can give you updates. And you keep hitting that URL on an interval.
Two - modern native native JavaScript in HTML5 browsers, supporting XMLHTTPRequest2, also known as AJAX 2, defined by new Web and HTML5 Standards.
If two, welcome to the new web!!
Multiple features have been added to Browsers that enhance connectivity - part of HTML5 features.
XMLHTTPRequest2 enables events in AJAX that help monitoring progress, as well as a lot of other things, from JavaScript itself. You can show the real percentage by monitoring the actual progress:
var oReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
oReq.addEventListener("progress", updateProgress, false);
oReq.addEventListener("load", transferComplete, false);
oReq.addEventListener("error", transferFailed, false);
oReq.addEventListener("abort", transferCanceled, false);
oReq.open();
Then you can define the handlers attached above (progress in your case):
function updateProgress (oEvent) {
if (oEvent.lengthComputable) {
var percentComplete = oEvent.loaded / oEvent.total;
// ...
} else {
// Unable to compute progress information since the total size is unknown
}
}
jQuery can be used in the second case as well. After all, jQuery is for helping you with less code, more doing!
Hoping that you are focusing on HTML5 and the new web solution, I would point you to Mozilla DOC - Monitoring Progress in AJAX from where I have taken this solution.
Every Browser now has a documentation for the web (like the one above from Mozilla) and additionally, all of them are contributing to a common venture called Web Platform, together with other influential Web and Internet giants - for a common updated Web Documentation. It is a work in progress, so not complete.
Also, there is no native functionality in the old AJAX, to monitor progress.
In the old-school way, you would have to create an interval function that would keep on hitting a separate URL to get the progress update. Your server also has to update the progress and send that as a response from that URL available from a different port.

Not Receiving Asynchronous AJAX Requests When Sent Rapidly

My script is sending a GET request to a page (http://example.org/getlisting/) and the page, in turn, responds back with a JSON object. ({"success":true, "listingid":"123456"})
Here's an example snippet:
var listingAjax = new XMLHttpRequest();
listingAjax.addEventListener("load", listingCallback, false);
function listingCallback(event) {
if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
console.log(this.responseText);
}
}
listingAjax.open("GET", "http://example.org/getlisting/", true);
listingAjax.send();
Simple enough. The script works perfectly too! The issue arises when I want to do this:
var listingAjax = new XMLHttpRequest();
listingAjax.addEventListener("load", listingCallback, false);
function listingCallback(event) {
if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
console.log(this.responseText);
}
}
window.setInterval(function() {
listingAjax.open("GET", "http://example.org/getlisting/", true);
listingAjax.send();
}, 250);
What I imagine should happen is my script would create a steady flow of GET requests that get sent out to the server and then the server responds to each one. Then, my script will receive the server's responses and send them to the callback.
To be more exact, say I let this script run for 5 seconds and my script sent out 20 GET requests to the server in that time. I would expect that my callback (listingCallback) would be called 20 times as well.
The issue is, it isn't. It almost seems that, if I sent out two GET requests before I received a response from the server, then the response is ignored or discarded.
What am I doing wrong/misunderstanding from this?

Many browsers have a built in maximum number of open HTTP connections per server. You might be hitting that wall?
Here is an example from Mozilla but most browsers should have something like this built in: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.max-connections-per-server
An earlier question regarding Chrome:
Increasing Google Chrome's max-connections-per-server limit to more than 6
If you have Windows, take a look at a tool like Fiddler - you might be able to see if all of the requests are actually being issued or if the browser is queueing/killing some of them.

You can't reuse the same XMLHttpRequest object opening a new connection while one is in progress, otherwise it will cause an abrupt abortion (tested in Chrome). Using a new XMLHttpRequest object for each call will solve that:
function listingCallback(event) {
if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
console.log(this.responseText);
}
}
window.setInterval(function() {
var listingAjax = new XMLHttpRequest();
listingAjax.addEventListener("load", listingCallback, false);
listingAjax.open("GET", "http://example.org/getlisting/", true);
listingAjax.send();
}, 250);
This will work nicely queueing a new ajax request for each interval.
Fiddle
Note that too frequent calls may cause slowdown due to the maximum limit of concurrent ajax calls which is inherent to each browser.
Though, modern browsers have a pretty fair limit and very good parallelism, so as long as you're fetching just a small JSON object modern browsers should be able to keep up even when using a dial-up.
Last time I made an ajax polling script, I'd start a new request in the success handler of the previous request instead of using an interval, in order to minimize ajax calls. Not sure if this logic is applicable to your app though.

Intermittent Cloudfront CDN failures (monitoring) - CDN Failover

For the past 2 months I have been experiencing Amazon Cloudfront intermittent failures (2-3 times a week) whereby the page would load from my web server but all the assets from the CDN would block in pending for minutes at the time (I confirmed that with shell curl from different datacenters some work some don't depending on the edge location - London?). Once the pending requests succeed all goes back to normal.
We have been reporting this to amazon but they always reply with "Don't expect reply from us. If gazillion people will complain only then will we consider looking into this" kind of message. Often it resumes normal operation before I'm done writing the support request.
I came to a conclusion that the best way to proceed due to lack of development time for migrating to other CDN is to add a script in the html header that will let us know whenever something similar happens. So say in the header try to download a tiny gif from the CDN if the request takes longer than N msec then call an arbitrary url within the root domain (for monitoring).
The question:
How does one reliably, across all popular browsers, request a file with callback on timeout. i.e.:
request file from CDN using AJAX - will not work due to cross-domain limitations?
setTimeout("callbackTimeout",2000) callbackTimeout(){getElementById() else ...HttpWebRequest...} - would that be blocked by pending HttpWebRequest request or will it work?
How else?
Thanks.

This has been briefly tested in IE.7&8, up to date FF on Windows & OSX as well as Chrome. I suggest you test it yourself. Minify! If you know better way of doing this please suggest your improvements. The way using i.e. script instead of an image has been considered and decided against probably mostly due to my ignorance.
The next version will write a cookie on timeout and the future requests will be handled on the server side (using relative asset path). The cookie will expire after say 30 minutes. Every consecutive timeout will renew that cookie. Not sure how I'll handle the first failover. Could be a redirect (not very elegant but simple). Perhaps I will figure out smarter way (possibly more elegant but more complex too).
<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
// Absolute path to a picture on your CDN to be monitored
cdnImagePath = "http://YOURCDNADDRESS.net/empty.gif";
//this is relative path (cross domain limitation)
//will be followed by "timeout" or "other" as a reason i.e. /cdnMonitor.php?message=timeout
cdnMonitoringPath = "/cdnMonitor.php?message=";
// Recommended 3000 for 3 second(s) timeout
cdnTimeoutMilisec = 3000;
// Set to true to be notified after timeout (provides extra information)
cdnNotifyAfterTimeout = false;
// Handler methods
cdnOK = function(){
if (!cdnTimer && cdnNotifyAfterTimeout) cdnNotify('success');
}
cdnFail = function(reason){
if (reason != "timeout") {
if (cdnTimer) clearTimeout(cdnTimer);
message = "error"
} else {
message = reason;
}
cdnNotify(message);
}
cdnTimeout = function() {
cdnTimer = false;
if (cdnImage.complete == false) {
cdnFail("timeout");
}
}
cdnNotify = function(message) {
if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
xmlhttp.open("GET", cdnMonitoringPath + message, true);
xmlhttp.send();
} else {// code for IE6, IE5
xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
}
// Load test image and define event handlers
cdnTimer = setTimeout("cdnTimeout()", cdnTimeoutMilisec);
cdnImage = new Image();
cdnImage.onload = cdnOK;
cdnImage.onerror = cdnFail;
cdnImage.src = cdnImagePath + "?" + Math.floor(Math.random()*1000000);
//]]>
</script>
Also this is what I'll use for ad hoc monitoring on the server side cdnMonitor.php:
error_log(date('Y-m-d H:i:s.') .next(explode('.',microtime(1))). ' - '. $_GET['message'] . ' - '. $_SERVER['HTTP_X_REAL_IP']. ' - ' . $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ."\n", 3, '/tmp/cdnMonitor.log');
You will need to change the "HTTP_X_REAL_IP" to REMOTE_ADDR or whatever suits your needs. I use reverse proxy so that's what I do.
Lastly I made some last minute changes in the post editor and might have broken something. Fingers crossed.