Question

I’m trying to get some data from a PHP script in a project right now. All examples I found searching for AJAX callback functions “use” the data already in the callback itself, but I want to fetch data and store it in a way ready to be returned.

function getEle (id) {
    var element = []; 

    $.ajax({
        url: 'slides.php',
        type: 'POST',
        data: {"id": id},
        success: function(data) {
            var content = data;

            element[0] = id;
            element[1] = content;
            // if I alert(element[1]); here it will work! 



        }
    });
    alert(element[1]); // here it just won't :/ ("undefined")
    return element;
}

Somewhere in my script some function needs to getEle(ments) but all I get is undefined.
is there a way to do what I want? Or is there maybe a better way to do this?

Answer 1

A solution would be to pass a callback function to getEle():

getEle(id, callback){
  $.ajax({
    /* some options, */
    success: function(){
      var content = data;
      element[0] = id;
      element[1] = content;
      callback(element);
    }
  })
}

And then pass a function containing the code of what to do when you have the element content:

getEle('myId', function(element){
  alert(element[1]);
});