AJAX versus CURL

Question

I need to know the difference between CURL (in PHP) and AJAX (in Javascript) when it comes to know Source of the request.

UPDATED: What I want to know is if I am generating requests using AJAX what sender IP address would be received at the server side with the packet as source? The same is with CURL and for all users it will single ip address be sent. But is that the same case with JS? JS executes at the client side so would it be client IP address?

Answer 1

cURL is a server-side process. This means that it will be called before the page is rendered and has nothing to do with the client's capabilities.

AJAX, however, is a client-side call. This means that it will not be executed until the client loads the page (or at least that piece of code is seen and executed, but this typically works on document.ready).

If you're looking to retrieve the information and dump it to the user immediately then cURL is your best bet. If you'd like to do a progressive load (dump the page, then retrieve the content for a "seamless" load to the user) then AJAX is the best bet. All th while keep in mind, though in today's day and age it's semi trivial, AJAX may be disabled in cases of FireFox's NoScript extension.

That being said, the source of the cURL execution will be on the server. The source of the AJAX request will be on a per-client basis. Neither of which provide a secure means of detection (server-side) to know who sent what (as headers can be altered).