CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptjquery
sapatos
sapatos

Reputation: 1304

return object from function is undefined from $.post in jquery

I've a jquery post function that returns a data object from a php code block.

$.post("get_chat_history.php", {
    item_id : item_id,
    participant_1 : participant_1,
    participant_2 : participant_2
}, function(data) {
    alert(data);

    return data;

});

this is called from the following function in another javascript file

var data = getChatHistory(current_member_id,item_global["user"]    ["member_id"],item_global["id"]);
alert(data);

now inside the $.post the alert(data) throws out the correct values in json format, but when I test the same value returned to the calling function I get undefined.

Is there something I'm missing as I want to keep this function generic and callable from elsewhere??

Regards,

Sapatos

Upvotes: 0

Views: 580

Answers (2)

Ohad
Ohad

Reputation: 1719

The problem you are facing is that jQuery.post is asynchronous. When getChatHistory is being called it has not yet received a reply from the server so it is undefined.

For this to work I would implement getChatHistory as a function that takes the data you need to pass to the server, and a function to perform when the 'success' part is triggered.

For more on callbacks.

Upvotes: 0

Daniil Ryzhkov
Daniil Ryzhkov

Reputation: 7596

That's because this function runs asyncronim and returns data to anonymous function function(data) {}. Use callbacks.

Here is example:

function getFoo(callback){
    $.get('somepage.html', function(data){
        callback(data)
    })
}
getFoo(function (data){
     // do something with data
})​

Upvotes: 1

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