jQueryUI .dialog("close") not working after ajax call

Question

I'm using jQueryUI's dialog with the modal form option to open a popup form. When the user clicks a button, it submits their input to a database, and then should close the dialog. Everything is working EXCEPT the closing of the dialog. (The manual Close button works; it just doesn't automatically close after coming back from the PHP database script. Here's the script code. (I tried to bold the line that's not working; apparently you can't nest bold inside of code tags, but the line is surrounded with double asterisks to make it stand out. Those are not part of the actual code!)

<script>
    $(function() {
        // a workaround for a flaw in the demo system (http://dev.jqueryui.com/ticket/4375), ignore!
        $( "#dialog:ui-dialog" ).dialog( "destroy" );

        var name = $( "#name" ),
            email = $( "#email" ),
            company = $( "#company" ),
            plate = $( "#plate"),
            allFields = $( [] ).add( name ).add( email ).add( company ).add( plate ),
            tips = $( ".validateTips" );

        function updateTips( t ) {
            tips
                .text( t )
                .addClass( "ui-state-highlight" );
            setTimeout(function() {
                tips.removeClass( "ui-state-highlight", 1500 );
            }, 500 );
        }

        function checkLength( o, n, min, max ) {
            if ( o.val().length > max || o.val().length < min ) {
                o.addClass( "ui-state-error" );
                updateTips( "Length of " + n + " must be between " +
                    min + " and " + max + "." );
                return false;
            } else {
                return true;
            }
        }

        function checkRegexp( o, regexp, n ) {
            if ( !( regexp.test( o.val() ) ) ) {
                o.addClass( "ui-state-error" );
                updateTips( n );
                return false;
            } else {
                return true;
            }
        }

        $( "#dialog-form" ).dialog({
            autoOpen: false,
            height: 390,
            width: 350,
            position: 'top',
            modal: true,
            zIndex: 3000,
            buttons: {
                "Submit your plate": function() {
                    var bValid = true;
                    allFields.removeClass( "ui-state-error" );

                    bValid = bValid && checkLength( plate, "plate code", 1, 7 );
                    bValid = bValid && checkLength( email, "email", 6, 80 );
                    bValid = bValid && checkLength( company, "company", 1, 100);

                    bValid = bValid && checkRegexp( email, /^((([a-z]|\d|[!#\$%&'\*\+\-\/=\?\^_`{\|}~]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])+(\.([a-z]|\d|[!#\$%&'\*\+\-\/=\?\^_`{\|}~]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])+)*)|((\x22)((((\x20|\x09)*(\x0d\x0a))?(\x20|\x09)+)?(([\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]|\x21|[\x23-\x5b]|[\x5d-\x7e]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])|(\\([\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0d-\x7f]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF]))))*(((\x20|\x09)*(\x0d\x0a))?(\x20|\x09)+)?(\x22)))@((([a-z]|\d|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])|(([a-z]|\d|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])([a-z]|\d|-|\.|_|~|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])*([a-z]|\d|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])))\.)+(([a-z]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])|(([a-z]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])([a-z]|\d|-|\.|_|~|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])*([a-z]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])))\.?$/i, "eg. ismi@instoremarketer.org" );


                    if ( bValid ) {

                            var nameStr = name.val();
                            var emailStr = email.val();
                            var companyStr = company.val();
                            var plateStr = plate.val();

                            var string = 'name='+ nameStr+'&email='+emailStr+'&company='+companyStr+'&plate='+plateStr;
                            //alert('string: '+string);


                            $.ajax({
                               type: "POST",
                               url: "submit_plate.php",
                               data: string,
                               dataType: 'json',
                               cache: false,
                               success: function(returnData){
                                                            alert(returnData.msg);
                                if(returnData.error === false) {
                                    **$( this ).dialog( "close" );**
                                }
                                else {
                                    alert("Error: "+returnData.msg);
                                }
                              }

                             });


                    }
                },
                Cancel: function() {
                    $( this ).dialog( "close" );
                }
            },
            close: function() {
                allFields.val( "" ).removeClass( "ui-state-error" );
            }
        });

        $( "#submit-plate" )
            //.button()
            .click(function() {
                $( "#dialog-form" ).dialog( "open" );
            });
    });
</script>

Any ideas? EDITED TO ADD PHP CODE

<?php
include('../cfg/ez_sql.php');
include('../cfg/db_setup.php');

$err = false;
if (isset($_REQUEST['plate'])) {

    $raw = "INSERT INTO dot_plate_submissions (plate_code, plate_name, plate_company, plate_email) VALUES ('%s', '%s', '%s', '%s')";
    $clean = sprintf($raw,
               mysql_real_escape_string($_REQUEST['plate']),
               mysql_real_escape_string($_REQUEST['name']),
               mysql_real_escape_string($_REQUEST['company']),
               mysql_real_escape_string($_REQUEST['email']));

    //error_log("cleaned query: $clean");

   $db->query($clean);
}
else {
    $err = true;
}

if($err) {
    $return['error'] = true;
    $return['msg'] = "There was an error submitting your plate";
}
else {
    $return['error'] = false;
    $return['msg'] = "made it to php";
}
echo json_encode($return);
?>

So even if the error is false, the ajax call should still get back two pieces of data.

Answer 1

I got this solved months ago but forgot to come back here and post the solution. It had nothing to do with my code; it was just a version conflict between jqueryui and jquery. I was using an older version of jquery; once I updated my library to the version that jqueryui required (and which was actually noted very clearly on the demo page; my bad for not reading closely!) it all worked correctly.

Answer 2

I used Anthony Shaw's solution. It worked great for me and I'm using ASP.net AJAX, so it looks like the problem has nothing to do with PHP.

Here's some simple JavaScript that does the job:

var DialogOps = function () {        
    var _dialog;
    this.showDialog = function () {
        _dialog = $('#dialog').dialog({
          // dialog options here
        });
    }
    this.closeDialog = function () {
        $(_dialog).dialog('close');
    }
}
var dialogOps = new DialogOps(); 

Call dialogOps.showDialog() to open the dialog and dialogOps.closeDialog() to close it.

Answer 3

in the "error" sub function rather than "success" write:

$("#diaolog-form-id").dialog("close");

Answer 4

Change your $.ajax call to include a context so $(this) is valid in the callback:

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "submit_plate.php",
    data: string,
    dataType: 'json',
    context: $(this),
    cache: false,
    success: function(returnData){
        if(returnData.error === false) {
            $( this ).dialog( "close" );
            } else {
                  alert("Error: "+returnData.msg);
            }
    }   
});

Answer 5

when you initialize your dialog do something like such:

var dialog = $( "#dialog-form" ).dialog({....});

Once you're ready to close your dialog, rather than using $(this) try:

$(dialog).dialog("close");

I've had to do this in the past in solutions I've wrote where I experienced the same issues