Question

I am making jquery calls to get and getJSON, but cannot access returned values outside of callback function. How can I access the returned data?

        var firstid;
        var nextid;

    $.get(callUrl, function(data) {  // call to add node
         var n = data.indexOf("id-");
         var m = data.indexOf("id-");
         firstid = data.substr(n+3,m - (n+3));
         nextid = data.substr(m+3);

             alert("firstid:" + firstid);  // returns correct value
    });

        alert("firstid:" + firstid);  // returns undefined for firstid

how can I get firstid outside the function?

Answer 1

ALL AJAX CALLS ARE ASYNCHRONOUS

SO you need to use callbacks. anything outside that will return undefined.

$.get(callUrl, function(data) {  // call to add node
     var n = data.indexOf("id-");
     var m = data.indexOf("id-");
     firstid = data.substr(n+3,m - (n+3));
     nextid = data.substr(m+3);

     doSomethingWithFirst(firstid);
});

function doSomethingWithFirst(f)   {
     //NOW do something
}