how to wait for an ajax call to return

Question

I\'m trying to use JQuery although i\'m struggling to successfully wait for a ajax call to succeed before executing further code. Is there a way to wait for an ajax to call

Answer 1

Yes, you can do request synchronously:

var bodyContent = $.ajax({
      url: "script.php",
      global: false,
      type: "POST",
      data: {id : this.getAttribute('id')},
      dataType: "html",
      async:false,
      success: function(msg){
         alert(msg);
      }
   }
).responseText;

Source: http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax/

However, synchronous requests are a step backwards, as the JS engine (and, in some browsers, the user interface) will block until the request completes. Douglas Crockford once wrote about synchronous requests:

Synchronous programming is disrespectful and should not be employed in applications which are used by people.