Question

I am trying to grab a value from a url:
http://localhost:8080/bin/task_status?id=2&cmd=percent_done
I am unsure how to actually do this within a javascript (ajax) command that once the page has been loaded will be called every .5 seconds. It is using the AJAX built in progress bar to display.

Answer 1

In jQuery you can do:

setInterval(function() {
    $.get('http://localhost:8080/bin/task_status?id=2&cmd=percent_done', function(data) {
        // data contains whatever that page returns
    });
}, 500);

setInterval() is a built-in JavaScript function that repeats a command every X milliseconds, and $.get() performs an AJAX request.

As @Pointy mentioned in a comment, this will work only if the page is also hosted on localhost:8080