XMLHttpRequest.getAllResponseHeaders()

The XMLHttpRequest method getAllResponseHeaders() returns all the response headers, separated by CRLF, as a string, or returns null if no response has been received. If a network error happened, an empty string is returned.

Syntax

var headers = XMLHttpRequest.getAllResponseHeaders();

Parameters

None.

Return value

A ByteString representing all of the response's headers (except those whose field name is Set-Cookie or Set-Cookie2) separated by CRLF, or null if no response has been received. If a network error happened, an empty string is returned.

An example of what a raw header string looks like:

date: Fri, 08 Dec 2017 21:04:30 GMT\r\n
content-encoding: gzip\r\n
x-content-type-options: nosniff\r\n
server: meinheld/0.6.1\r\n
x-frame-options: DENY\r\n
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8\r\n
connection: keep-alive\r\n
strict-transport-security: max-age=63072000\r\n
vary: Cookie, Accept-Encoding\r\n
content-length: 6502\r\n
x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block\r\n

Each line is terminated by both carriage return and line feed characters (\r\n). These are essentially delimiters separating each of the headers.

Example

This example examines the headers in the request's readystatechange event handler, XMLHttpRequest.onreadystatechange. The code shows how to obtain the raw header string, as well as how to convert it into an array of individual headers and then how to take that array and create a mapping of header names to their values.

var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("GET", "foo.txt", true);
request.send();

request.onreadystatechange = function() {
  if(this.readyState == this.HEADERS_RECEIVED) {

    // Get the raw header string
    var headers = request.getAllResponseHeaders();

    // Convert the header string into an array
    // of individual headers
    var arr = headers.trim().split(/[\r\n]+/);

    // Create a map of header names to values
    var headerMap = {};
    arr.forEach(function (line) {
      var parts = line.split(': ');
      var header = parts.shift();
      var value = parts.join(': ');
      headerMap[header] = value;
    });
  }
}

Once this is done, you can, for example:

var contentType = headerMap["content-type"];

This obtains the value of the Content-Type header into the variable contentType.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Using XMLHttpRequest
• Setting request headers: setRequestHeader()