Getting the source code any URL with JavaScript

Question

There have been occasions where I have desired to retrieve the HTML of pages other than the one I am typically on. This has happened either when I am using a browser's JavaScript console or when I am writing a bookmarklet. So, given any URL, I wish to retrieve the content of that URL so that I may then use it in, say, a JavaScript variable.

The desired solution cannot use jQuery since that requires loading an external library, which is only optimal in the context of JavaScript that is running in a webpage (as opposed to a console or from a bookmarklet). (Also, adding a script tag to a page just to use in the console is clunky.)

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:52

1

I believe someone has already answered this,

function httpGetAsync(theUrl, callback)
{
    var xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xmlHttp.onreadystatechange = function() { 
        if (xmlHttp.readyState == 4 && xmlHttp.status == 200)
            callback(xmlHttp.responseText);
    }
    xmlHttp.open("GET", theUrl, true); // true for asynchronous 
    xmlHttp.send(null);
}

All credits to the author : Link to original answer

edited May 23 '17 at 11:52

Community

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answered Jan 26 '17 at 04:58

Alan

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Proper etiquete is flag it as a duplicate instead of adding another answer. It pollutes the site and makes it hard to find good answers to common questions (due to volume) – blurfus Jan 26 '17 at 05:07

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 26 '17 at 05:00

You will undoubtedly run into cross-site scripting limitations on many pages you try. Many servers prevent requests from domains that differ from the domain you're making the request to. So if you go into the console on this site for example, and try to get the google.com homepage, Google well send back an error saying you don't have permission.

Try it yourself by running the following on this page's console:

$.get('https://www.google.com')

Google returns an error.

You may be able to do this in a browser extension but likely not from the console of any old page.

Getting the source code any URL with JavaScript

2 Answers2