Question

I have an ajax call in jquery which returns 4 different arrays.
3 of these arrays i want to use outside of the ajax success function and the data in the arrays should be accessible for certain click events.

I just don’t know the best way to handle the array variables.
some people say going global is a bad idea and other say its ok.. so

ajax success function:
does stuff with one of the arrays

array1, array2 needs to be used by other functions and click events

function display_results_1(){
$('#myDiv').html(array1.id);
}


$('#binfo').click(function(){
    $('#client_info_div').dialog({

    $('#myDiv').html(array2.id);

    });
})

This is my ajax call:

  $('#c_search').submit(function(){
           data = ($(this).serialize());

          $.ajax({
              url: 'actions/get_company.php',
              type: 'POST',
              data: data,
              cache: false,
              dataType: 'json',
              success: function(selected){
`doing stuff here`
    })
    })

Should I use separate Ajax calls to get the data when needed for each different function?

Answer 1

You definitely don’t want your variables in the global scope, but you could wrap everything in a function to prevent them from being in the global scope:

$(function() {
    var array1 = [];
    var array2 = [];

    function display_results_1(){
$('#myDiv').html(array1.id);
}


$('#binfo').click(function(){
    $('#client_info_div').dialog({

    $('#myDiv').html(array2.id);

    });
})

$('#c_search').submit(function(){
           data = ($(this).serialize());

          $.ajax({
              url: 'actions/get_company.php',
              type: 'POST',
              data: data,
              cache: false,
              dataType: 'json',
              success: function(selected){
`doing stuff here`
    })
    })

});

By doing this you’ll ensure that the code is also running on page load, notice the $() wrapping the function.

See http://api.jquery.com/ready/ for more info.

Contrary to the previous answers, going global is NOT a good idea. You may end up having multiple pieces of JavaScript using the same variables.