jquery getResponseHeader always returns 'undefined'?

Question

I have a a form that I am submitting via ajax. I am using the jquery form plugin. What I am trying to do is get the \'Location\' header which is returned from my server.

Answer 1

I'm doing something similar using the rails/rest way of returning a 201 "created" with a Location header to the new object and an empty body. jQuery's ajax method will throw a "parseerror" when encountering this since its expecting json but getting nothing back. I simply catch the 201 redirect in my error callback like so:

function request_error(req, textStatus, errorThrown) 
{
    if (req.status == 201 ) {
        var created_loc = req.getResponseHeader('Location');
        console.log('(201) created: ' + created_loc);

        // ... manual redirect here i.e. issue another ajax request to created_loc
        return;
    }

    // ... handle an actual error here
}

hope this helps!