Question

I have a simple ajax query to a file which basically returns in JSON error or success.

ie:

{"error":"1"}{"error_msg":" Invalid Expiry Date. Your credit card has not been billed for this transaction."}

The issue however is that even though I’m getting this json data return from my ajax post, I can’t seem to access the data at all.

My jquery looks something like this:

     $.ajax({
          type: 'POST',
          url: 'process_sale.php',
          data: $(this).serialize(), 
          cache: false,
          dataType: 'json',
          success: function(data) {

            if(data['success']=='1'){

                alert('hi');

                $('#feedback').html('<strong>Congratulations</strong');

            }

            if(data['error']=='1') {

                alert('hi');

                $('#feedback').html(data['error_msg']);


            }

                   // this following alert does nothing, because its empty even if the json 
                   // returns what I pasted above example result.

                   alert(data['error'] + ' ' + data['success']);

          }
        });

None of the alerts will do anything.

Am I missing something really obvious here? I can’t seem to wrap my head around why this isn’t working as it seems to be fairly identical to other code I have working.

Answer 1

You’re trying to parse invalid JSON — you have two adjacent JSON objects in your example. You need to either place them in an array, or make them one object if you want JS to understand them:

// You want this:
{"error":"1", // note , not {}
 "error_msg":" Invalid Expiry Date. "+
              "Your credit card has not been billed for this transaction."}

// or this (notice the `,` and the `[`, and `]`)
[{"error":"1"},{"error_msg":" Invalid Expiry Date. Your credit card has not been billed for this transaction."}]

Based on the rest of your code, I would wager that the first one will meet your needs better. You’re probably going to prefer to access the error message data[‘error’] and not data[0][‘error’]