CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptcordova
Ryan Martin
Ryan Martin

Reputation: 1693

How do I call a server api from my phonegap app?

I'm struggling to understand something that i'm sure is pretty basic. I've searched around everywhere and can't find a solution to my problem.

The most related stackoverflow question I found was this one: How do I call remote API using Phonegap for Android?

That post looked promising, but still doesn't work for me. I'm building my first PhoneGap app and trying to use the Grouped api.

I don't understand conceptually how to send and receive data from PhoneGap. I'm building everything locally, so I suppose this isn't technically PhoneGap related.

Here is my api call: 

http://grouped.com/api?f=user_exists&[email protected]

Should return 

{"msg": true}

But all I ever get when testing locally is "Error 200" with empty data. I feel like this guy: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UU4_bwov47DseacR1-ttTdOg&feature=player_detailpage&v=GsqUZkmO-zk

I'm testing inside firefox 10.0.1 on Linux from 'localhost'. I assume running locally is as similar to PhoneGap as possible but could be wrong.

Here's the code I have now that I assume should work (but obviously doesn't): 

function makeRequest() {
    var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
    request.open("GET", "http://www.grouped.com/api?f=user_exists&[email protected]", true);
    request.onreadystatechange = function() {
        if (request.readyState == 4) {
            if (request.status == 200 || request.status == 0) {
                console.log(request);
            }
        }
    }
    request.send();
}
makeRequest();

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for the help, always.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 4332

Answers (4)

user2678179
user2678179

Reputation: 1

You should use request.responseText to get the response body from the server.

Upvotes: 0

Simon MacDonald
Simon MacDonald

Reputation: 23273

The problem is you are testing from the file protocol in FireFox. FireFox is keeping your request from working because it is a Cross-site XMLHttpRequest. Some version of FireFox will allow you to enable cross site XHR's but I'm pretty sure this won't work for 10.0.1.

If it is possible for you to modify the server so that it allows requests from your domain that would be one solution.

If you don't have access to the server then you should switch to using Chrome for you development. If you start Chrome like:

chrome.exe --disable-web-security

you will be able to do cross site AJAX requests. As well Chrome is based off webkit so behaviour there will be closer to what you will see on Android, iOS and BB which all deploy webkit based browsers.

Upvotes: 2

dda
dda

Reputation: 6203

You probably ran into a cross-domain restriction. Which platform are you developing on? On iOS you might have to add something like that to your Cordova.plist:

<key>ExternalHosts</key>
<array>
    <key>grouped</key>
    <string>www.grouped.com</string>
</array>

For Android it's buggy, and your best bet is to use jQuery and JSONP.

Upvotes: 0

Connor Tumbleson
Connor Tumbleson

Reputation: 3330

I just ran

http://www.grouped.com/api?f=user_exists&[email protected]

via my web browser and got the correct JSON response. Your localhost must have problems communicating with the real world wide web, or something in your code is preventing the response. I didn't really look over the code to check for errors though.

Upvotes: 0

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