Question

I am trying to call the following functions sequentially, but they don’t necessarily return in the correct order.

I then learned about asynchronous functions which can be called sequentially using “callbacks”.

How can I make these functions execute in sequence using callbacks?

$.getJSON('http://localhost/search_data.php?title='+title+'&run=annotations&jsoncallback=?', function(r1){
    $.each(make_all_titles3(r1), function (i,v) {
        $vpl.append(v);     
    });
});

$.getJSON('http://localhost/search_data.php?title='+title+'&run=Link&jsoncallback=?', function(r2){
    $.each(make_all_titles3(r2), function (i,v) {
        $vpl.append(v);     
    });
});

$.getJSON('http://localhost/search_data.php?title='+title+'&user='+user+'&run=bookmarks&jsoncallback=?', function(r3){
    $.each(make_all_titles3(r3), function (i,v) {
        $vpl.append(v);     
    });
});

$vpl.append('<div>Related Terms</div>');

$.getJSON('http://localhost/context-search.php?title='+title+'&jsoncallback=?', function(r4){
    $.each(make_all_titles3(r4), function (i,v) {
        $vpl.append(v);     
    });
});

Answer 1

The easiest solution would be simply nesting the calls. Scroll down for a clean and readable solution.

function _process(r) {
    $.each(make_all_titles3(r), function (i, v) {
        $vpl.append(v);
    });
}

$.getJSON('http://localhost/search_data.php?title=' + title + '&run=annotations&jsoncallback=?', function (r) {
    _process(r);
    $.getJSON('http://localhost/search_data.php?title=' + title + '&run=Link&jsoncallback=?', function (r) {
        _process(r);
        $.getJSON('http://localhost/search_data.php?title=' + title + '&user=' + user + '&run=bookmarks&jsoncallback=?', function (r) {
            _process(r);
            $vpl.append('<div>Related Terms</div>');
            $.getJSON('http://localhost/context-search.php?title=' + title + '&jsoncallback=?', function (r) {
                _process(r);
            });
        });
    });
});

Now the clean and readable one, using the async library:

var load = [
    { url: 'http://localhost/search_data.php?title=' + title + '&run=annotations&jsoncallback=?', before: null },
    { url: 'http://localhost/search_data.php?title=' + title + '&run=Link&jsoncallback=?', before: null },
    { url: 'http://localhost/search_data.php?title=' + title + '&user=' + user + '&run=bookmarks&jsoncallback=?', before: null },
    { url: 'http://localhost/context-search.php?title=' + title + '&jsoncallback=?', before: function() { $vpl.append('<div>Related Terms</div>'); } }
];

async.forEachSeries(load, function(item, next) {
    if(item.before) {
        item.before();
    }
    $.getJSON(item.url, function(r) {
        $.each(make_all_titles3(r), function (i, v) {
            $vpl.append(v);
        });
        next();
    });
});