Fetch API: better than AJAX?

“A Promise-based mechanism for programmatically making web requests in the browser.” Replaces most uses of XMLHttpRequest in traditional web applications.

• All the fetch things, at WHATWG
• Code

See more links at the end of this post.

Example 1 (run in console):

fetch('http://mindymcadams.com/index.html').then(response => {
   return response.text();
}).then(text => {
   console.log(text);
});

Example 2 (run in console with animals.json file in same dir as the currently open page):

fetch('animals.json').then(response => {
   return response.json();
}).then(json => {
   console.log(json);
});

Each of the examples returns the full contents of the file.

Some good stuff:

• Working with the Fetch API — this is really clear, step by step, complete (from Google Developers; part of the PWAs workshop, but this can stand alone)
• Slides that provide an overview of fetch()
• Introduction to fetch() (also from Google Developers)
• A window.fetch JavaScript polyfill (on GitHub): “Chrome and Firefox both implement the window.fetch function natively, [so] no code from this project actually takes any effect in these browsers.”