[JIRA] Created: (EDS-24) The embedded discovery service will fail to work with Internet Explorer when native XHR is disabled

[nsroy@uiowa.edu (JIRA)]

The embedded discovery service will fail to work with Internet Explorer when native XHR is disabled
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                 Key: EDS-24
                 URL: https://issues.shibboleth.net/jira/browse/EDS-24
             Project: Embedded Discovery Service
          Issue Type: Bug
    Affects Versions: 1.0
         Environment: Internet Explorer >= 7, with native XMLHttpRequest disabled by policy, etc.
            Reporter: nsroy at uiowa.edu
            Assignee: Rod Widdowson
            Priority: Minor


Believe it or not, there are some places that deploy Internet Explorer, and force users to use it.  Even a modern version like IE8, but then they set a group policy that disables (for some odd reason) native XMLHttpRequest support (see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537505(v=vs.85).aspx) These places frequently leave ActiveX enabled (no comment).  This leaves an avenue open for using the old ActiveX-based XHR object.  The embedded DS does not try to fall back to this method, even if available.  It would be nice to see this support.  I have some proof of concept code of this working:
var xmlHttp; 
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
{
	xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); 
}
else if (window.ActiveXObject)
{
	xmlHttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
else
{
	xmlHttp = null;
}

Then in the EDS, I simply replaced:
try{aA=new XMLHttpRequest()}
with:
try{aA=xmlHttp}

This fixed the issue for these oddly configured clients.

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