Question

I’m more of a backend guy, this javascript stuff is a bit out of my area. I could really use a point in the right direction 🙂

So I have an URL that, for example, returns this JSON:

[{"pk": 1, "model": "didyouknow.fact", "fields": {"fact": "Random fact 1"}}, 
 {"pk": 2, "model": "didyouknow.fact", "fields": {"fact": "Random fact 2"}}, 
 {"pk": 3, "model": "didyouknow.fact", "fields": {"fact": "Random fact 3"}}, 
 {"pk": 4, "model": "didyouknow.fact", "fields": {"fact": "Random fact 4"}}, 
 {"pk": 5, "model": "didyouknow.fact", "fields": {"fact": "Random fact 5"}}]

I want to write a piece of javascript that I can embed in my HTML that will randomly choose and print one of the “fact”s from the JSON URL.

Answer 1

Hopefully this helps:

var a = '[{"pk": 1, "model": "didyouknow.fact", "fields": {"fact": "Random fact 1"}}, {"pk": 2, "model": "didyouknow.fact", "fields": {"fact": "Random fact 2"}}, {"pk": 3, "model": "didyouknow.fact", "fields": {"fact": "Random fact 3"}}, {"pk": 4, "model": "didyouknow.fact", "fields": {"fact": "Random fact 4"}}, {"pk": 5, "model": "didyouknow.fact", "fields": {"fact": "Random fact 5"}}]';
alert(eval(a)[0].model);

Here’s an example that uses AJAX to call out to a (local) web service:

$.ajax({
  url: "test.php",
  success: function(data){
    alert(eval(data).result);
  }
});