Dive Into Greasemonkey

Teaching an old web new tricks

6.3. Integrating data from other sites

Greasemonkey defines a function, GM_xmlhttpRequest, that allows user scripts to GET data from any URL or POST data to any URL.

See GM_xmlhttpRequest for more details and examples.

This function was introduced in Greasemonkey 0.2.6. You should test whether it exists and degrade gracefully if it does not.

Further reading

LibraryLookup integrates Amazon.com with your local library.
Annotate Google integrates Google and del.icio.us.
Bloglines Tweaks adds an Expand button to article summaries in Bloglines to retrieve and display the full article.
Flick Batch Enhancer uses GM_xmlhttpRequest to add features to Flickr using Flickr's own REST API.
Hide Google Redirects reprograms Google Personal Search History to use normal <a href="..."> links, but still track clicks by calling GM_xmlhttpRequest on the appropriate tracking URL.

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