I have read this question but it doesn't exactly answer my question.
Unfortunately, it looks like things have changed in in the XHR object since I last looked at AJAX, so it is no longer possible to directly access responseText
before it is finished being populated.
I have to write a page that uses AJAX (preferably jQuery, but I am open to suggestions) to retrieve CSV data via HTTP from a server I have no control over. The response data could be quite large; a megabyte of text is not uncommon.
The server is stream-friendly. Is there still any way to get access to a stream of data as it is being returned, directly from JavaScript?
I do have the option of writing some PHP code that lives in the middle and uses some sort of "Comet" tech (long-polling, EventSource, etc), but I would prefer to avoid that if possible.
In case it is relevant, assume for this question that users have the latest version of Firefox/Chrome/Opera and old browser compatibility is not an issue.