Question

I have constructed a PHP file which scrapes a web page (using cURL) to obtain some data, and outputs it to the screen in JSON format.

The target website involves some redirects which temporarily outputs data to my PHP file. Once the redirects have completed successfully, the JSON is presented as expected. The problem that I am encountering is that when I try to access the JSON using jQuery’s $.ajax() method, it sometimes returns the incorrect data, because it isn’t waiting for the redirects to complete.

My question is if it’s possible to tell the AJAX request to wait a certain number of seconds before returning the data, thus allowing time for the redirects in the PHP script to execute successfully?

Please note that there is no cleaner solution for the page scrape, the redirects are essential and have to be outputted to the screen for the scraping to complete.

Answer 1

There’s always timeout in the settings.

jQuery docs:

timeout Number

Set a timeout (in milliseconds) for the request. This will
override any global timeout set with $.ajaxSetup().
The timeout period starts at the point the $.ajax call is made;
if several other requests are in progress and the browser
has no connections available, it is possible for a request
to time out before it can be sent. In jQuery 1.4.x and below,
the XMLHttpRequest object will be in an invalid state if
the request times out; accessing any object members may
throw an exception. In Firefox 3.0+ only, script and JSONP
requests cannot be cancelled by a timeout; the script will
run even if it arrives after the timeout period.