没有浏览器，是否可以进行ajax调用？

Question

I'm trying to create JavaScript tests using mocha and chutzpah, this means all my tests are done browserless. The issue I'm running into is that all my AJAX calls are returning an empty string, even the following does not work:

$.ajax({
    url: "http://www.something.com/",
    //Ajax events
    async: false,
}).done(function(data) {
    test = data;
});

Here, the test is set to '', I've tried many different combinations of AJAX parameters too such as the async , type , dataType , success , etc.

So my question is, are AJAX calls possible without a browser?

Answer 1

I took a quick look at chutzpah and it seems that it's implemented on top of Phantom.js. So you're not running your test without a browser. On the contrary, you're running your test inside a Webkit based browser - albeit one without a GUI.

Since your test is running inside a browser, all browser restrictions apply. This includes the same-origin-policy. So depending on how chutzpah loads your test script your ajax call may fail.

If chutzpah loads your test page from disk then same-origin-policy always fails. I don't know much about chutzpah but if it's possible make it load your test page from a URL (you can always run a test server on localhost).

You can actually disable security features in Phantom.js by passing --web-security=false on the command line. Not sure how you'd do that from Mocha and chutzpah but that is another option you can investigate.

Answer 2

So my issue was stupid. Ajax queries on top of the framework I was using needed the "www." So instead of doing a call to "google.com" I needed to do a call to "www.google.com". The www redirection wasn't working.