AJAX: POST data to a different url

Question

I'm creating an event registration page.

On this page, users need to be able to search for a database item so it can be registered to this event. Therefore, the POST request must be submitted to a different URL than what the user is on, so that it doesn't interfere with the form wizard sequence.

This is my javascript:

(document).ready(function() {

    $('#primary_artist_lookup').on('input', function(){
        console.log("Listener success");
        var searchItem = $('#primary_artist_lookup').val();
        $.ajax({
                url : $('#lookupLink').val(),
                type : "POST", //http method
                data : searchItem,
                dataType: "json",

                // handle a successful response
                success : function (json) {
                    console.log(json); // log the returned json to the console
                    console.log("success"); // another sanity check
                },
                // handle a non-successful response
                error : function(xhr,errmsg,err) {
                    $('#results').html("<div class='alert-box alert radius' data-alert>Oops! We have encountered an error: "+errmsg+
                        " <a href='#' class='close'>&times;</a></div>"); // add the error to the dom
                    console.log(xhr.status + ": " + xhr.responseText); // provide a bit more info about the error to the console
                }
            });
        });

The url is a hidden html value that maps to the url I am trying to POST the data to:

<p hidden id="lookupLink">{% url "Users:lookup" %}</p>

There is an additional js portion to submit a CSRF token to Django for security purposes:

// CSRF VALIDATION //

// This function gets cookie with a given name
function getCookie(name) {
    var cookieValue = null;
    if (document.cookie && document.cookie != '') {
        var cookies = document.cookie.split(';');
        for (var i = 0; i < cookies.length; i++) {
            var cookie = jQuery.trim(cookies[i]);
            // Does this cookie string begin with the name we want?
            if (cookie.substring(0, name.length + 1) == (name + '=')) {
                cookieValue = decodeURIComponent(cookie.substring(name.length + 1));
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    return cookieValue;
}
var csrftoken = getCookie('csrftoken');

/*
The functions below will create a header with csrftoken
*/

function csrfSafeMethod(method) {
    // these HTTP methods do not require CSRF protection
    return (/^(GET|HEAD|OPTIONS|TRACE)$/.test(method));
}
function sameOrigin(url) {
    // test that a given url is a same-origin URL
    // url could be relative or scheme relative or absolute
    var host = document.location.host; // host + port
    var protocol = document.location.protocol;
    var sr_origin = '//' + host;
    var origin = protocol + sr_origin;
    // Allow absolute or scheme relative URLs to same origin
    return (url == origin || url.slice(0, origin.length + 1) == origin + '/') ||
        (url == sr_origin || url.slice(0, sr_origin.length + 1) == sr_origin + '/') ||
        // or any other URL that isn't scheme relative or absolute i.e relative.
        !(/^(\/\/|http:|https:).*/.test(url));
}

$.ajaxSetup({
    beforeSend: function(xhr, settings) {
        if (!csrfSafeMethod(settings.type) && sameOrigin(settings.url)) {
            // Send the token to same-origin, relative URLs only.
            // Send the token only if the method warrants CSRF protection
            // Using the CSRFToken value acquired earlier
            xhr.setRequestHeader("X-CSRFToken", csrftoken);
        }
    }
});

return false;

});

When I try to use this ajax function, it doesn't post to the url I request, but rather the page that the users are on. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

use text() instead:

url : $('#lookupLink').text(),

and data should be an object:

data : { searchItem : searchItem },