Question

        function checkDatabase(){
            var query = document.getElementById("input").value;
            var modQuery = query.split("@")[1];
            var url = "http://www.somesite.com/index.html/?id="+modQuery;

            $.getJSON(url, function(data) {
                $.each(data, function(i, item) {
                    console.log(item);
                    if(item.length < 1){
                        return false;
                    } else {
                        searchResult = {
                            'name':item[0].screen_name,
                            'loc':item[0].location,
                            'tweet':item[0].tweets[0].tweet_text
                        };
                        return true;
                    }
                });
            });
        }

        function searchForUser(){
            var result = checkDatabase();
            console.log(result);
            if(result){
                console.log(searchResult);          
            } else {
                input.setCustomValidity("Sorry it seems you haven't tweeted about every1speaks yet!");
            }   
        }

I can’t understand what it going wrong here, I’ve seen suggestions at AJAX calls are async (does that mean that they happen when the page is loading?) how can i tweak this to work?

Answer 1

Because you

1. do not return anything from you method
2. even if you try to return, since you are doing an asynchronous call (AJAX) which completes after your function has returned its value, you will be unable to return the ajax call result…

You will need to put the logic in the callback method of the getJSON call.