CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jqueryajaxcsvsyntax-errorspecial-characters
eveferon
eveferon

Reputation: 33

Cannot get CSV text via ajax request

I have a little problem of not being abble to retrieve csv response.

There is a csv available here link to csv

I am trying to retrieve this data, however there is a problem with special characters in the reponse.

I successfuly recieve the data but then jQuery tries to decode it and through a syntax error: My request is:

$.ajax({
    url: 'http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/Contributors.php?wikilang=en&wikifam=.wikipedia.org&page=Cloud+computing&since=&until=&grouped=on&order=-edit_count&max=1000&order=-edit_count&format=csv',
    dataType: "script",
    success: function(data){
        alert('success');
    },
    error: function(test1, test2, test3) {
        alert('error');
    }
});

The error is (pointing at % character)

SyntaxError: syntax error
1004+%28922%2F82%29,SamJohnston,2008-07-26+09%3A40,2013-03-07+18%

I also tried to set the dataType to text in order to not decode the data. In this case I get an error for the ajax request.

$.ajax({
    url: 'http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/Contributors.php?wikilang=en&wikifam=.wikipedia.org&page=Cloud+computing&since=&until=&grouped=on&order=-edit_count&max=1000&order=-edit_count&format=csv',
    dataType: "text",
    success: function(data){
        alert('success');
    },
    error: function(test1, test2, test3) {
        alert('error');
    }
});

I tried to experiment with .ajax() parameters contentType, dataType, scriptCharset etc. It does not help.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 5342

Answers (2)

T.J. Crowder
T.J. Crowder

Reputation: 1074295

dataType: "text" would be correct. It sounds like you're running into the Same Origin Policy, which prevents cross-domain calls. When you said dataType: "script", jQuery automatically converted the request into adding a script element rather than doing an actual ajax call. Adding script elements that reference scripts cross-domain isn't a violation of the SOP (which is why we can use CDNs like Google's and Microsoft's for common scripts). But you can't do that when grabbing the CSV, because the CSV isn't (of course) valid JavaScript code.

If the server you're retrieving from is under your control, and if you're using a modern browser (which in this case means any vaguely recent version of Chrome, Firefox, or Opera, or using IE9 or higher), you can implement Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, which allows cross-origin ajax calls if the server allows the source origin of the requesting document. CORS basically means responding to an HTTP OPTIONS call that asks whether it's okay to send the ajax call with appropriate headers.

Upvotes: 1

i100
i100

Reputation: 4666

It seems to me that this is a cross-domain request which is not acceptable. Read here and here for more info

Upvotes: 0

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