Question

I’m trying to assign a JSON array from a URL to a variable. Here’s my code:

$.getJSON("tljson.json",function(result){
  var items = [];
  items.push(result);
});

However, ‘alerting’ the items only returns

[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

What you’re doing wrong is alerting the result. You have an array of four objects, but alert only shows the default text representation of objects, [object Object]. Convert your data to string yourself before printing. For example, instead of alert(result), you can try alert(JSON.stringify(result)).

Also, alert is ugly, annoying and hard to use; if you can, use console.log() and its friends instead, much easier on the programmer. Check the results in the JavaScript console. (This is under the assumption the alert() was for your own debugging benefit; if it’s for users, try doing something in HTML instead.)