How to access ETag header with jQuery AJAX request?

Question

I'm using a jQuery ajax call to request data from a server that is sending an ETag in the HTTP response headers. I need access to the header, but when the request succeeds and I call jqXHR.getAllResponseHeaders(), I only see a subset of the headers returned by the server.

Example:

var jqXHR = $.ajax({
        type: 'GET',
        url: <my api url>,
        dataType: 'json',
        ifModified: true,
        success: function (result) {
          var headers = jqXHR.getAllResponseHeaders();
          console.log(JSON.stringify(headers));
        });

The headers I see from the jqxhr are:

Pragma: no-cache\r\n
Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Jan 2014 10:45:14 +0000\r\n
Content-Type: text/html\r\n
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0, no-cache=\"set-cookie\"\r\n
Expires: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT\r\n

The actual headers returned from the server (observed in chrome dev tools):

Access-Control-Allow-Origin:*
Cache-Control:no-cache="set-cookie"
Cache-Control:post-check=0, pre-check=0
Cache-Control:no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate
Connection:keep-alive
Content-Encoding:gzip
Content-Length:407
Content-Type:text/html
Date:Fri, 24 Jan 2014 20:27:54 GMT
ETag:"29d8d1d98115057fe902b520199ea1b3"
Expires:Sat, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT
Last-Modified:Thu, 23 Jan 2014 07:14:57 +0000
Pragma:no-cache
Server:nginx/1.1.19
Set-Cookie:AWSELB=F3E9557318EB956CA386FC6CB4270164AD7830493699A2B6AED008F4C5F9DB5952A2A1072C33DDC32DEDE0CA6A3734EBAFD51B57A7A093B69A36A6659EF493E1B92BA63DE6;PATH=/
X-Powered-By:PHP/5.4.19

I need to access the ETag header, but it seems as if jQuery or chrome are hiding it from me. I have tried the same code in Firefox with the same results. Can someone help me with this?

Answer 1

You can try accessing headers in complete callback instead of success

complete: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus){
   var eTag = XMLHttpRequest.getResponseHeader('ETag');
}

This seems to work for some users here