XMLHttpRequest

Terminology

Ajax

An acronym of asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Ajax is an umbrella term for a group of programming techniques enabling asynchronous client-server communications.

ArrayBuffer

A generic fixed-length binary buffer.

ArrayBufferView

A typed array view referring to an ArrayBuffer and enabling the indexing and manipulation of buffer elements.

authentication

The process of verifying an identity. HTTP standard authentication schemes are Basic and Digest. HTTP authentication exchange is based in the challenge-response mechanism: the response message with the 401 status code is used by an origin server to challenge the authentication of a user agent.

Blob

Binary large object - an object represented as an opaque block of binary data.

cache

A local storage operated by a client or a server and used for keeping response messages.

Comet

An umbrella term for programming techniques allowing a Web server to push data to a user agent. The Comet application model is also known as Ajax Push, Reverse Ajax, or HTTP Streaming.

connection

A virtual circuit established between client and server programs.

entity

The payload of an HTTP request or response. Entity header fields can carry information about entity length and MIME type.

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol - an application-level protocol used by the World Wide Web to transfer online resources.

HTTP 2.0

The next planned version of the protocol based on SPDY.

HTTP header

The part of an HTTP message which precedes the body of a request or a response.

message

The basic unit of HTTP data exchange: a client generates an HTTP request; a server reacts to the client message by sending an HTTP response.

proxy

An intermediary program that can act as both a server and a client. A transparent proxy does not modify HTTP messages. A non-transparent proxy can add headers to an HTTP request as well as provide additional services, e.g., network content filtering or media type transformations.

resource

A network data object uniquely identified by a URI.

SPDY

A network protocol developed at Google. SPDY allows many concurrent HTTP requests to run across a single TCP session, reduces the network bandwidth and enables servers to initiate communications with client applications

user agent

The client which acts on behalf of a user and initiates an HTTP request, e. g., a Web browser.