Question

I have an external resource similar to https://www.googleapis.com/freebase/v1/text/en/bob_dylan which returns a JSON. I want to display the value of result key in a div in html (lets say the name of the div is “summary”). Also the value of result key should be displayed in plain text.
The URL returns the json:

{ “result”: “Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, is an American
singer-songwriter, author, poet, and painter, who has been a major
figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan’s most
celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an …….” }

The JSON has just the result key, no other keys
Basically I do not want to use anything other than plain HTML and JavaScript. I am a relative beginner to JavaScript and therefore I ask for commented code.

Answer 1

You can do this with JSONP like this:

function insertReply(content) {
    document.getElementById('output').innerHTML = content;
}

// create script element
var script = document.createElement('script');
// assing src with callback name
script.src = 'http://url.to.json?callback=insertReply';
// insert script to document and load content
document.body.appendChild(script);

But source must be aware that you want it to call function passed as callback parameter to it.

With google API it would look like this:

function insertReply(content) {
    document.getElementById('output').innerHTML = content;
}

// create script element
var script = document.createElement('script');
// assing src with callback name
script.src = 'https://www.googleapis.com/freebase/v1/text/en/bob_dylan?callback=insertReply';
// insert script to document and load content
document.body.appendChild(script);

Check how data looks like when you pass callback to google api:
https://www.googleapis.com/freebase/v1/text/en/bob_dylan?callback=insertReply

Here is quite good explanation of JSONP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSONP