nsIXMLHttpRequest

nsIXMLHttpRequest along with nsIJSXMLHttpRequest and nsIXMLHttpRequestEventTarget are Mozilla's implementation details of the DOM XMLHttpRequest object.

This page contains documentation, specific to Mozilla application and add-on developers.

The interface definition: https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/dom/xhr/nsIXMLHttpRequest.idl

Elevated Privileges

As mentioned in the "Non-Standard Properties" the property of channel was read-only. When using the XPCOM interface, as seen below in Example 2, we can get access to this. The most obvious benefit is that we can set nsiRequest - Constants in the xhr.channel.loadFlags. For instance, as done in Example 2, the flag of LOAD_ANONYMOUS is added, this strips all user data (cookies, tokens, etc).

Using event handlers from native code

(Not sure if it's up-to-date)

From native code, the way to set up onload and onerror handlers is a bit different. Here is a comment from Johnny Stenback <jst@netscape.com>:

The mozilla implementation of nsIXMLHttpRequest implements the interface nsIDOMEventTarget and that's how you're supported to add event listeners. Try something like this: nsCOMPtr<nsIDOMEventTarget> target(do_QueryInterface(myxmlhttpreq)); target->AddEventListener(NS_LITERAL_STRING("load"), mylistener, PR_FALSE) where mylistener is your event listener object that implements the interface nsIDOMEventListener. The 'onload', 'onerror', and 'onreadystatechange' attributes moved to nsIJSXMLHttpRequest, but if you're coding in C++ you should avoid using those.

Though actually, if you use addEventListener from C++ weird things will happen too, since the result will depend on what JS happens to be on the stack when you do it....

Conclusion: Do not use event listeners on XMLHttpRequest from C++, unless you're aware of all the security implications. And then think twice about it.

Example code

This is a simple example code for opening a simple HTTP request from a xul application (like a Mozilla extension) without using observers:

 var req = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/xmlextras/xmlhttprequest;1"].createInstance();
 req.open('POST', "http://www.foo.bar:8080/nietzsche.do", true);
 req.send('your=data&and=more&stuff=here');

Example 2

var {Cu: utils, Cc: classes, Ci: instances} = Components;
Cu.import('resource://gre/modules/Services.jsm');
function xhr(url, cb) {
    let xhr = Cc["@mozilla.org/xmlextras/xmlhttprequest;1"].createInstance(Ci.nsIXMLHttpRequest);
    let handler = ev => {
        evf(m => xhr.removeEventListener(m, handler, !1));
        switch (ev.type) {
            case 'load':
                if (xhr.status == 200) {
                    cb(xhr.response);
                    break;
                }
            default:
                Services.prompt.alert(null, 'XHR Error', 'Error Fetching Package: ' + xhr.statusText + ' [' + ev.type + ':' + xhr.status + ']');
                break;
        }
    };
    let evf = f => ['load', 'error', 'abort'].forEach(f);
    evf(m => xhr.addEventListener(m, handler, false));
    xhr.mozBackgroundRequest = true;
    xhr.open('GET', url, true);
    xhr.channel.loadFlags |= Ci.nsIRequest.LOAD_ANONYMOUS | Ci.nsIRequest.LOAD_BYPASS_CACHE | Ci.nsIRequest.INHIBIT_PERSISTENT_CACHING;
    xhr.responseType = "arraybuffer"; //dont set it, so it returns string, you dont want arraybuffer. you only want this if your url is to a zip file or some file you want to download and make a nsIArrayBufferInputStream out of it or something
    xhr.send(null);
}
xhr('https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/eb9895ade1bd6627e054429d1e18b576?s=24&d=identicon&r=PG&f=1', data => {
    Services.prompt.alert(null, 'XHR Success', data);
    var file = OS.Path.join(OS.Constants.Path.desktopDir, "test.png");
    var promised = OS.File.writeAtomic(file, new UInt8Array(data));
    promised.then(
        function() {
            alert('succesfully saved image to desktop')
        },
        function(ex) {
             alert('FAILED in saving image to desktop')
        }
    );
});