What is the difference between Local Events and Global Events in jQuery?

Ajax requests produce a number of different events that you can subscribe to. There are two types of events:

Local Events

These are callbacks that you can subscribe to within the Ajax request object.

$.ajax({
   beforeSend: function(){
      // Handle the beforeSend event
   },
   complete: function(){
     // Handle the complete event
   }
   // ......
});

Global Events

These events are broadcast to all elements in the DOM, triggering any handlers which may be listening. You can listen for these events like so:

$("#loading").bind("ajaxSend", function(){
   $(this).show();
 }).bind("ajaxComplete", function(){
   $(this).hide();
});

Global events can be disabled, for a particular Ajax request, by passing in the global option, like so:

$.ajax({
   url: "test.html",
   global: false,
   // ...
});