XMLHttpRequest.responseType

The XMLHttpRequest.responseType property is an enumerated value that returns the type of the response. It also lets the author change the response type to one "arraybuffer", "blob", "document", "json", or "text". If an empty string is set as the value of responseType, it is assumed as type "text".

Setting the value of responseType to "document" is ignored if done in a Worker environment. When setting responseType to a particular value, the author should make sure that the server is actually sending a response compatible to that format. If the server returns data that is not compatible to the responseType that was set, the value of response will be null. Also, setting responseType for synchronous requests will throw an InvalidAccessError exception.

The values supported by responseType are the following:

Value	Data type of response property
""	DOMString (this is the default value)
"arraybuffer"	ArrayBuffer
"blob"	Blob
"document"	Document
"json"	JavaScript object, parsed from a JSON string returned by the server
"text"	DOMString
"moz-blob"	Used by Firefox to allow retrieving partial Blob data from progress events. This lets your progress event handler start processing data while it's still being received.
"moz-chunked-text"	Similar to "text", but is streaming. This means that the value in response is only available during dispatch of the "progress" event and only contains the data received since the last "progress" event. When response is accessed during a "progress" event it contains a string with the data. Otherwise it returns null. This mode currently only works in Firefox.
"moz-chunked-arraybuffer"	Similar to "arraybuffer", but is streaming. This means that the value in response is only available during dispatch of the "progress" event and only contains the data received since the last "progress" event. When response is accessed during a "progress" event it contains a string with the data. Otherwise it returns null. This mode currently only works in Firefox.
"ms-stream"	Indicates that the response is part of a streaming download. It is supported only for download requests. This mode is available only in Internet Explorer.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
XMLHttpRequest	Living Standard	WHATWG living standard

Browser compatibility