Console.log returning 'undefined' [duplicate]

Answer 1

Your AJAX request has not finished firing by the time console.log is being executed.

If you move the console.log to the success callback, you will get the data correctly.

var names;

$.ajax({
     type : 'POST',
     url : postUrl+"/admin/returnUserJSON",
     success : function(data){
          names = data;
          console.log(names);
     } 
});

I would suggest reading up on asynchronous javascript programming!