Question

I’m using JQuery with CodeIgniter PHP to figure make AJAX calls and return data via JSON. I want to figure out what my JSON object has returned, but I’m not sure what the syntax might be. Is there a way to just alert or log all the contents of the JSON object somehow? This is my code:

$.ajax({
    type: "GET",
    url: groups_url,
    success: function(parent){
        alert (parent);
    }
});

If I do this – I get an object, but I don’t know what it contains.

Answer 1

Learn to love the Javascript console. The console.log method covers almost every eventuality — giving you a nicely formatted summary of the object (or array, string, number, or boolean) that you’re concerned with.

console.log(parent);

You can see the log by a console built into your browser (e.g. Chrome console, the Firefox 4 web console, IE developer tools) or by using a plugin (e.g. Firebug for Firefox <4).