I know there are a lot of javascript/ajax libraries out there such as prototype, but what if you just need the bare minimum? I don’t like lugging around features I don’t use, so I wrote this really handy little object. As I said, this thing does the bare minimum.

//handler has the signature: methodName(responseTxt)
function AJAX(handler){
    
    function _handleTheAx(req, handle) {
        if (req.readyState == 4) {
            handle(req.responseText);
        }
    }
    
    function call(url){
        var req = this.reqobj;
        if ((req.readyState == 4 || req.readyState == 0)) {
            req.open("GET", url, true);
            req.onreadystatechange = function() {_handleTheAx(req, handler);};
            req.send(null);
        }
    }
    
    function getXmlHttpRequestObject() {
        if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
                return new XMLHttpRequest();
        } else if(window.ActiveXObject) {
                return new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
        } else {
                alert("Your Browser Sucks!\nIt's about time to upgrade don't you think?");
                return null;
        }
    }
    
    this.call = call;
    this.handler = handler;
    this.reqobj = getXmlHttpRequestObject();
}

So how do you use it? Easy:

function theResponse(respTxt){
    alert(respTxt);
}
function doSomethingCool(){
    teHajax.call('url/to/my/script.php');
}
var teHajax = new AJAX(theResponse);

You would just have to call doSomethingCool() and the response would show up in theResponse(). Yay! That was easy wasn’t it!