Question

I have a server side file that returns this data

{
success: true,
m_sName:'smith, james',
m_ShortName:'Jim_S',
m_FirstName:'james',
m_LastName:'smith',
m_Rank:'CONT',
m_Unit:'',
m_Address:'PO Box 241',
m_City:'guthrie',
m_State:'KY',
m_Zip:'42234',
m_Phone:'270-956-3174',
m_Fax:'',
m_Email:'[e-mail]',
m_Title:'',
m_RegnetName:'james.andrew.smith',
m_BirthMonth:'10',
m_UserID:105745,
m_Age:47
}

Then on the client I have code that looks like this:

var Person = {
//Private members

getXmlRequestObj : function() {
        if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
            importHTML2: new XMLHttpRequest();
        } else if(window.ActiveXObject) {
            importHTML2: new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
        } else {
            importHTML2: "Your Browser needs an upgrade";
        }
    },


//Set up the global content retrieval object
//called importHTML
importHTML:  new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"),



getAjaxData:function(sUrl) {
    if (Person.importHTML.readyState == 4 || Person.importHTML.readyState == 0) {
        Person.importHTML.open("GET", sUrl, false);// make it wait for the response
        Person.importHTML.onreadystatechange = Person.handleDataArrived; 
        Person.importHTML.send(null);
    }       
},

//Called when the AJAX response is returned from any operation
//that lists handleContentArrived as its onreadystatechanged event
//for importHTML eg:importHTML.onreadystatechange = handleContentArrived; .
handleDataArrived: function() {
    if (Person.importHTML.readyState == 4) {
        Person._bar = eval("("+Person.importHTML.responseText+")");
        Person._sName = Person._bar.m_sName;
        Person._ShortName = Person._bar.m_ShortName;
        Person._firstName = Person._bar.m_FirstName;
        Person._lastName = Person._bar.m_LastName;
        Person._Unit = Person._bar.m_Unit;
        Person._securityGroups = Person._bar.m_Rank;
        Person._height = '6.0 ft';
        Person._weight = '280lbs';
        Person._hairColor = 'Brown/gray';
        Person._photoURL = 'www.photourl.com';
        Person._facebookID = '[e-mail]';
        Person._emailAddress = Person._bar.m_Email;
        Person._phoneNumber = Person._bar.m_Phone;
        Person._Fax = Person._bar.m_Fax;
        Person._NetworkName = Person._bar.m_RegnetName;
        Person._ID = Person._bar.m_UserID;
        Person._Address = Person._bar.m_Address;
        Person._City = Person._bar.m_City;
        Person._State = Person._bar.m_State;
        Person._Zip = Person._bar.m_Zip;
        Person._Title = Person._bar.m_Title;
    }
},
wholeName : function()
    {
    return this._firstName + ', ' + this._lastName; 
    },

// constructor
loadPerson : function(ID){
    Person._ID = ID;
    Person.getAjaxData('getUser.asp?uid='+ID);
},


setFirstName : function(fname) {
    Person._firstName = fname;
    return true;
},
// add the methods to the prototype so that all of the 
// Foo instances can access the private static
getFirstName : function() {
    return Person._firstName;
}
}
Student = {

superClass:Person,
sayHello : function(){  alert('hi, I am a student, and my name is '+this.superClass.wholeName());} 
}
Student.superClass.loadPerson(105745);
Student.sayHello();

This works fine but only in IE because of the activex reference to xmlHTTP. everytime I try to make the importHTML variable call the this.getXmlRequestObj or Person.getXmlRequestObj it doesnt work…..How can I do this?

Answer 1

Your problem is that you never use getXmlRequestObj. I’m guessing you first tried to do something like

...
innerHTML: Person.getXmlRequestObj(),
...

But that doesn’t work, because you can’t refer to an object’s properties in the object’s own object literal definition. Instead, you can create a one-time initialization function that sets up importHTML, which you call immediately after the object definition.

var Person = {
    ...
    initialize: function() {
        Person.importHTML = Person.getXmlRequestObj();
    }
    ...
}
Person.initialize();

EDIT:

Your JSON does not have quoted keys. JavaScript is perfectly happy to have objects like this:

{
    foo: "bar"
}

but the JSON specification is more strict. It requires object keys to be quoted, like so:

{
    "foo": "bar"
}

eval executes JavaScript, so it accepts the looser syntax. JSON.parse and most other JSON utilities will only accept the strict syntax.