Limited availability
Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.
The fetchLater()
method of the Window
interface creates a deferred fetch.
A fetchLater()
request is sent once the page is navigated away from (it is destroyed or enters the bfcache), or after a provided activateAfter
timeout â whichever comes first.
The fetchLater()
methods returns a FetchLaterResult
object containing a single activated
value stating whether the request has been sent yet. Note the method does not return the result of the actual fetch when that happens (since it is often sent after the document has been destroyed) and the whole response of the fetch, including body and headers, is ignored.
Requests whose body is a ReadableStream
cannot be deferred.
The fetchLater()
method is controlled by the connect-src
Content Security Policy directive rather than the directive of the retrieved resources.
fetchLater(resource)
fetchLater(resource, options)
Parameters
The fetchLater()
method takes all the same parameters as fetch()
, but with one additional activateAfter
option.
resource
This defines the resource that you wish to fetch. Identical to fetch()
, this can either be:
URL
object â that provides the URL of the resource you want to fetch. The URL may be relative to the base URL, which is the document's baseURI
in a window context.Request
object.options
Optional
A DeferredRequestInit
object containing any custom settings that you want to apply to the request, including an activateAfter
timeout value that defines how long the result should be deferred for before sending.
The same exceptions for fetch()
can be raised for fetchLater()
, along with the following additional exceptions:
QuotaExceededError
DOMException
Use of this feature was blocked due to exceeding the available quota. See fetchLater()
quotas for more details. Callers of fetchLater()
should be defensive and catch QuotaExceededError
errors in almost all cases, especially if they are embedding third-party JavaScript.
RangeError
DOMException
Thrown when a negative activateAfter
value is specified.
TypeError
DOMException
In addition to the reasons for fetch()
, this exception will also be thrown for a ReadableStream
request (which cannot be deferred) or for use of untrustworthy URLs (such as http://
).
A FetchLaterResult
containing an activated
boolean property indicating if the request has been sent yet.
Note: Once the fetch request is sent, its response â including the body and headers â is not made available and will be ignored.
ExamplesThe fetchLater()
quotas article provides examples of how the quotas are applied.
GET
request until the page is navigated away from or closed
fetchLater("/send_beacon");
Defer a POST
request for around one minute
In this example we create a Request
, and provide an activateAfter
value to delay sending the request for 60,000 milliseconds (or one minute):
fetchLater("/send_beacon", {
method: "POST",
body: getBeaconData(),
activateAfter: 60000, // 1 minute
});
Note: The actual sending time is unknown, as the browser may wait for a longer or shorter period of time, for example to optimize batching of deferred fetches.
Defer aPOST
request for around one minute with a try/catch
The same example as above, but the best practice is to enclose this in a try/catch:
try {
fetchLater("/send_beacon", {
method: "POST",
body: getBeaconData(),
activateAfter: 60000, // 1 minute
});
} catch (e) {
if (e instanceof QuotaExceededError) {
// Handle the quota error
} else {
// Handle other errors
}
}
Defer a POST
request for around one minute and create a function to check if sent
const result = fetchLater("https://report.example.com", {
method: "POST",
body: JSON.stringify(myReport),
activateAfter: 60000 /* 1 minute */,
});
function checkIfFetched() {
return result.activated;
}
Update a pending request
In this example we use an AbortController
to cancel and recreate the request:
let beaconResult = null;
let beaconAbort = null;
function updateBeacon(data) {
const pending = !beaconResult || !beaconResult.activated;
if (pending && beaconAbort) {
beaconAbort.abort();
}
createBeacon(data);
}
function createBeacon(data) {
if (beaconResult && !beaconResult.activated) {
// Avoid creating duplicated beacon if the previous one is still pending.
return;
}
beaconAbort = new AbortController();
beaconResult = fetchLater({
url: data,
signal: beaconAbort.signal,
});
}
Invalid examples
Any of the following calls to fetchLater()
would throw:
// Only potentially trustworthy URLs are supported
fetchLater("http://untrusted.example.com");
// The length of the deferred request has to be known
fetchLater("https://origin.example.com", { body: someDynamicStream });
// Deferred fetching only works on active windows
const detachedWindow = iframe.contentWindow;
iframe.remove();
detachedWindow.fetchLater("https://origin.example.com");
Specifications Browser compatibility See also
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