Additional options

The Ajax toolbox provided by jQuery is well-stocked. We've covered several of the available options, but we've just scratched the surface. While there are too many variants to cover here, we will give an overview of some of the more prominent ways to customize Ajax communications.

The low-level Ajax method

We have seen several methods that all initiate Ajax transactions. Internally, jQuery maps each of these methods onto variants of the $.ajax() global function. Rather than presuming one particular type of Ajax activity, this function takes a map of options that can be used to customize its behavior.

Our first example, Listing 6.1, loaded an HTML snippet using $('#dictionary').load('a.html'). This action could instead be accomplished with $.ajax() as follows:

$.ajax({
  url: 'a.html',
  success: function(data) {
    $('#dictionary').html(data);
  }
});

Listing 6.21

Rather than take separate arguments for URL, data, and a success callback, $.ajax() takes a single map of over...