In JS is it possible to fetch the content of a web page assigning it to a variable? For example, why the following toy code does not work?
var req = new XMLHttp
The above does not work, because Ajax requests cannot access files/pages on other domains, due to security concerns. Typically, you can make a script using [Insert Server Side Language here] to download the requested page. Then your javascript can make a request to this page.
There is also 'JSONP', but this is typically used on sites that provide specific JSONP access, which most random URL's do not.