xmlHTTPrequest won't open ("GET" , url, true); I'm miffed! PHP

Question

I've been trying to get a url to open but I'm miffed as to why this hasn't worked. The code is listed and explained below. Any help will be deeply appreciated.

The object:

function getXMLHTTPRequest() {
   var req =  false;
   try {
      /* for Firefox */
      req = new XMLHttpRequest(); 
   } catch (err) {
      try {
         /* for some versions of IE */
         req = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
      } catch (err) {
         try {
            /* for some other versions of IE */
            req = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
         } catch (err) {
            req = false;
         }
     }
   }

   return req;
}

The object is called like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
var myDelete = new getXMLHTTPRequest();
</script>

Now here's what I want to do:

function removeArticle(id) {

    if (myDelete) {

        try {
            var deletUrl = "delete.php";
            var query = deletUrl + "?theid=" + id;
            myDelete.open("GET", query, true);
            myDelete.onreadystatechange = removeArticleResponse;
            myDelete.send(null);
        } catch (e) {
            alert ("Unable to connect to the server:\n" + e.toString());
        }
    } else {
        alert ("Bad! Very BAD!");
    }
}

When I do this:

        if (myDelete.open("GET", query, true)) {
        myDelete.onreadystatechange = removeArticleResponse;
        myDelete.send(null);
        } else {
            alert ("No road!");
        }

The alert("No road!"); shows me that the code doesn't execute passed this point:

if (myDelete.open("GET", query, true)) {

This means that the if (myDelete) { works. The code passes this stage and for some reason stops here: myDelete.open("GET", query, true); It won't open the url. I'm not sure what the problem is.

Edit: Here's the function used to access the server response:

function removeArticleResponse () {
    if (myDelete.status == 4) {
        if (myDelete.status == 200) {
                        try {
                            response = myDelete.responseText;
                            document.getElementById('displaynewsletterarticleresult').innerHTML = response;
                        } catch(e) {
                            alert("An error occured while reading the response:" + e.toString());
                        }
        } else {
        alert ("An error occured when attempting to retrieve the data:\n" + myDelete.statusText);
        }
    }
}

Solution 1

In your response function, do you mean to check .status == 4 instead of .readyState?

Solution 2

According to this, XMLHttpRequest.open() has no return value, so your check will always fail.