CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptjqueryreturn-value
bestprogrammerintheworld
bestprogrammerintheworld

Reputation: 5520

Return value of a callback function in jQuery?

I have this code:

function dialogTexts(message) {
        var langText = $.ajax({
            type: 'GET',
            url: '/index.php/main/dialogtexts',
            dataType: 'json'
        });

        langText.done(function(data) {   
            message(data);
        });                        

        langText.fail(function(ts) {
            alert(ts.responseText);
        });
    }

    dialogTexts(function(text) {
        alert(text.delete);         
    });

I'm using a callback to alert the string text.delete (in above code), but I want to do something like:

dialogTexts(function(text) {
    return text;
});

var deleteConfirmationDialogText = dialogTexts.delete;
alert(deleteConfirmationDialogText); //deleteConfirmationDialogText is undefined

Upvotes: 0

Views: 368

Answers (1)

jfriend00
jfriend00

Reputation: 708056

dialogTexts is a function and it does not have a property .delete. That's why dialogTexts.delete is undefined when you try to use it. You simply can't use the kind of shortcut you're trying to do.

Also, the return statement in here:

dialogTexts(function(text) {
    return text;
});

is doing nothing. It's just returning to the caller of that callback which is inside of dialogTexts() and that caller is not doing anything with the return value so return text is doing nothing.

If you want to alert the text, you will have to do what you first had:

dialogTexts(function(text) {
    alert(text.delete);         
});

That is the only real way to do it and this is a consequence of how asynchronous programming works with AJAX calls. There are some other techniques for handling callbacks (such as promises), but they all require you to process the asynchronously returned data in a callback function. That's just the nature of asynchronous programming.

Upvotes: 1

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