Question

I am a new programmer whose primary background is in Java. I am attempting to write in fault handling to a program in Javascript as I would in Java. In java I use the Apache HTTP client to both create the client and call the Httpget request.

 HttpClient cli = new DefaultHttpClient();
 cli.getParams().setIntParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.SO_TIMEOUT, 5000);
 HttpResponse resp = null;
 for (int i = 0 ; i < 5 ; i++) {
 try {
 resp = cli.execute(new HttpGet("http://example.org/products"));
 }
 catch{//code}
 }

I am unsure how to emulate this behavior in a javascript environment. Does anyone have insight or knowledge into this field?

Answer 1

Here’s the exact equivalent of your code snippet, but in JavaScript!

 var cli;
 var callback = function(resp) {
    // due to the asynchronous nature of XMLHttpRequest, you'll need to put all logic that uses the response in a callback function.
    // code below using responseText
    console.log(resp);
 };
 var timeout = 5000;
 var handler = function() {
    var errorSeries;
    if (this.readyState === 4) { // indicates complete
        errorSeries = parseInt(this.status.toString().charAt(0)); // will be "2" or "3" for 200 or 300 series responses
        if (errorSeries === 2 || errorSeries === 3) {
            callback.call(this, this.responseText);
        } else {
            // handle http error here
        }
    }
 }
 for (var i = 0 ; i < 5 ; i++) {
 cli = new XMLHttpRequest(); // ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP') in IE8 and below
 cli.timeout = timeout;
 cli.onreadystatechange = handler;
 try {
    cli.open('GET','http://example.org/products');
    cli.send();
 }
 catch(e) {
 }

If the above looks wordy, that’s because it is. Other commenters have steered you right: look into using a library like jQuery to abstract away this kind of boilerplate.