How to get the file using it's URL in Javascript?

In general, can you get an XML file from an API using JavaScript?

• I understand that most api's would prevent you from accessing them with javascript because of security problems, but are there ways around that? EDIT: I'm sorry, this question is particularly about one API, the http://legiscan.com/legiscan api, which seems to be adverse to access using javascript, jquery, etc.

• Answer:

  If they don't have any technique for accessing the data in a cross-domain way, like CORS (Cross Origin Resource Sharing) or JSONP, then the best way to handle this is to just create your own proxy on your own domain to access the API. Just have a small server that just forwards your JavaScript's Ajax requests over to the API, and returns the response that it provides.