Question

I have a generated array which if hard coded passes the array objects to a function for processing fine.

For example:

$("#termCloud").jQCloud([{text:'some',weight:10},{text:'thing',weight:8}]);

However, I need to make this more dynamic so am generating the the array externally and importing using ajax. This is what I’m Trying:

(generateArray.asp would output {text:'some',weight:10},{text:'thing',weight:8})

$.ajax({
    url: '/generateArray.asp',
    success: function(data){
        $("#wordCloud").jQCloud([data]);
    }
})

I have tried several dataTypes and all fail.

The problem seems to be that the in the working version the JQCloud plugin receives the array as objects: [object Object],[object Object] where as my ajax version receives/sends it as a string: {text:'some',weight:10},{text:'thing',weight:8}

Is there a way to import the the array and pass it though to the JQCloud function/plugin as a proper array rather than a string or convert the string to an array for processing?

Many thanks..

In repospone to two answers below; I should point out that the return doesn’t seem to be recognised as valid JSON data…

Answer 1

I guess you should JSON-parse the data variable before sending it to the plugin:

var json = JSON.parse(data);
$("#wordCloud").jQCloud([json]);

…or you could add

dataType : 'json'

…to the settings parameter in the ajax function call.