Determining if a request is AJAX

Need to determine if a request is an AJAX request or a standard POST/GET request?

Often times you might want to include a partial view to be sent to the browser when the request is not an AJAX request. For example, the header and footer of a page should only be returned for a full page state change. To accomplish this task is ColdFusion is really quite simple.

If you are using a Javascript library such as prototype.js it is even easier because prototype appends two custom lines to the HTTP request that is sent by the browser:

X-Requested-With, and
X-Prototype-Version.

Combining this with the GetHttpRequestData() function in ColdFusion you get:

^?View Code COLDFUSION

<cffunction name="isAJAX" output="false" returntype="boolean" access="public">
    <cfset var headers = GetHttpRequestData().headers>
    <cfif structkeyexists(headers, "X-Requested-With")>
        <cfif headers['X-Requested-With'] eq 'XMLHttpRequest'>
            <cfreturn true>
        </cfif>
    </cfif>
    <cfreturn false>
</cffunction>

Its really that simple…

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