IE, XMLHttpRequest, and caching

I recently noticed an oft cited irritation with using XMLHttpRequest in Internet Explorer. Turns out, the browser intercepts HTTP GET requests made from within JavaScript and gives your Ajax application a cached response instead of fresh data.

I was running some tests on scorpion_server, using the JavaScript client in the example that I've packaged with the server, and I noticed that I could change the data stored in a resource when using IE6, but I couldn't get the value I had just set. This means my client-server pair is pretty much useless in IE6 (probably 7 too). But I thought of a solution. IE is just performing a test for exact match when checking the cache, so if any part of the URL is different, IE will actually perform the query like I want it to. So I added a timestamp URL parameter to all GET requests made by the client if the browser is IE, and I configured the server to ignore all URL parameters on GET requests. I wasn't using them anyway, perhaps someday I will, but I don't foresee a need because all I want is a super simple remote data store. (Who knows, YAGNI might just be my new mantra.)

Note that IE was the only browser (of those I tested) that exhibited this annoying behavior. Mozilla based browsers (Firefox, SeaMonkey, Flock), Opera, and Safari all behaved correctly and don't require the timestamp URL parameter hack.

JavaScript client for my Scorpion Server

I've added a JavaScript client to the simple web server project: scorpion server. The client is able to set the username and password and make authenticated GET and POST requests to retrieve and modify resources on the server. Now that this portion is complete, I'm ready to rebuild my Ajax Wiki application to run on top of this simple web server.