Question

I’m attempting to pull two separate things from outside sources to put onto an HTML page I’m creating. I have a successful AJAX function to pull the most recent video from a particular Youtube channel by parsing through the XML/RSS feed for that channel. I receive this feed through an AJAX call.

I’d also like to get the most recent blog post from a Blogger account. The code for parsing the feed to get the most recent entry shouldn’t be difficult, but I’m having trouble with simultaneous AJAX calls. I read somewhere that it can only handle one at a time? I’m weary about queuing them because I don’t want to the content on the page to load in steps. I’d rather it all just get fetched simultaneously. How might I go about doing this?

Here is my current script:

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
    $(function() {
      $.ajax({
        type: "GET",
        url: "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/devinsupertramp/uploads?orderby=updated&alt=rss&client=ytapi-youtube-rss-redirect&v=2",
        dataType: "xml",
        success: parseXml
      });
    });

    function parseXml(xml) {
        $(xml).find("item:first").each(
            function() {
                var tmp = $(this).find("link:first").text();
                tmp = tmp.replace("http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=", "");
                tmp = tmp.replace("&feature=youtube_gdata", "");
                var tmp2 = "http://www.youtube.com/embed/" + tmp + "?autoplay=1&controls=0&rel=0&showinfo=0&autohide=1";
                var iframe = $("#ytplayer");
                $(iframe).attr('src', tmp2);
            }
        );
    }
</script>

Answer 1

I read somewhere that it can only handle one at a time?

Either you misunderstood what the person was trying to say or they were incorrect. Javascript doesn’t run any functions concurrently so someone with poor English might reword that as “can only handle one at a time” but that doesn’t mean you can’t make multiple AJAX calls. jQuery is smart and will do what it needs to do to make sure both calls are executed eventually.

If you’d like all the content to be loaded simultaneously the sad fact is you can’t. However you can make it appear that way to the user by declaring a flag that is set by the success method of each call. Then just keep the content hidden until both flags have been set.

EDIT:

Here’s a very simplistic approach to make it appear that they are fetched simultaneously:

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
    var youtubComplete = false;
    var otherComplete = false;

    $(function() {
      $.ajax({
        type: "GET",
        url: "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/devinsupertramp/uploads?orderby=updated&alt=rss&client=ytapi-youtube-rss-redirect&v=2",
        dataType: "xml",
        success: parseXml
      });
      $.ajax({
        type: "GET",
        url: "http://someotherdata.com/",
        dataType: "xml",
        success: function() { otherComplete = true; checkFinished(); }
      });
    });

    function parseXml(xml) {
        $(xml).find("item:first").each(
            function() {
                var tmp = $(this).find("link:first").text();
                tmp = tmp.replace("http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=", "");
                tmp = tmp.replace("&feature=youtube_gdata", "");
                var tmp2 = "http://www.youtube.com/embed/" + tmp + "?autoplay=1&controls=0&rel=0&showinfo=0&autohide=1";
                var iframe = $("#ytplayer");
                $(iframe).attr('src', tmp2);
            }
        );
        youtubeComplete = true;
        checkFinished();
    }
    function checkFinished()
    {
        if(!youtubeComplete || !otherComplete) return;
        // ... Unhide your content.
    }
</script>