Question: Is it possible to prevent the browser from following redirects when sending XMLHttpRequest-s (i.e. to get the redirect status code back and handle it myself)?

Answer: 
I extended user's answer to include an `abort()` call. It seems like this prevents the server from sending too much data when all you want is the redirect url.

```js
var url = 'the url'
var http = new XMLHttpRequest();
http.open('GET', url);
http.onreadystatechange = function() {
    if (this.readyState === this.DONE) {
        console.log(this.responseURL)
        this.abort() // This seems to stop the response
    }
}
http.send()

```

In real life I wrapped the above code in a promise, but it made the code hard to read.

Also, I don't understand why getting the redirect url needs to be this difficult, but that is a question for another time and place.
It is not possible to handle redirect or 302 status at client side as answered in other comments. However you can prevent redirection. To do that you can set request header "X-Requested-With" with "XMLHttpRequest"
xhttp.setRequestHeader("X-Requested-With", "XMLHttpRequest");
This should be done after open but before send. Example below

```
let xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhttp.onreadystatechange = function () {
   if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
         reqObj.success(JSON.parse(this.responseText))
   } else if (this.status != 200) {
         reqObj.error(this.statusText)
   }
};
xhttp.open(reqObj.type, reqObj.url, reqObj.async);
xhttp.setRequestHeader("X-Requested-With", "XMLHttpRequest");
xhttp.send();

```