Question

Hopefully there is an easy way to do this and my Javascript skills are just lacking. I am wanting to call a function that will get some Facebook posts, add them to an array and return to use elsewhere. Current code is below.

function GetFaceBookStream(name, max) {
    FB.init({ apiKey: 'removed for post' });
    var lastDate = '2011-04-29Z00:00:00';
    var faceBookArray = [];
    var faceBookString;        

    FB.api("/" + name + "/feed", { limit: max, since: lastDate }, function (response) {
        var sb = string_buffer();

        for (var i = 0; i < response.data.length; i++) {
            var post = response.data[i];

            sb.append("<li class='facebook'>");
            sb.append("<img alt=\"Facebook\" src='Images\\Carousel\\fbIcon.png\' />");
            sb.append("<h4>FACEBOOK</h4>\n");
            sb.append("<div class=\"from-name\"><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=" + post.from.id + "\">" + post.from.name + "</a></div>");
            sb.append("<div class=\"time\">" + post.created_time + "</div>");
            if (post.message != undefined) {
                sb.append("<div class=\"message\">" + post.message + "</div>");
            }

            sb.append("</li>stringSplitMarker");
        }

        faceBookString = sb.toString();
        faceBookArray = faceBookString.split('stringSplitMarker');            
    });

   return faceBookArray;
}

I realize this set up won’t work due to variable scope in Javascript, but this is basically what I’m trying to achieve. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

You’re making an asynchronous AJAX request.
The callback only runs after your code finishes.

You need to pass the data back using a callback.

For example:

function GetFaceBookStream(name, max, callback) {
    ...
    FB.api(..., function(response) { 
        ...
        callback(something, else);
    });
}

You can call the function by supplying a callback to receive the response:

GetFaceBookStream(name, max, function(param1, param2) {
    //This code runs later and can use the response.
});