Is it permissible for me to directly initiate an API request from JavaScript to an external API (in this scenario at ) using the XMLHttpRequest object? If not, what steps should I take to retrieve data from this source? Do I need to incorporate a PHP backend to handle the API call and then transmit the data back to the frontend JavaScript? Are there alternative methods for fetching data without relying on backend code? After conducting some research online, I discovered that jQuery allows for this process if the data is in JSON format. However, how can I achieve the same functionality with XML data?