Question

Im working with jQuery. I have an app that makes ajax requests to server that responds with JSON.

in some cases the response from the server will indicate the name of a JS function to be called

{"responseType":"callback", "callback":"STUFF.TestCallback","callbackData":"this is in the callback"}

If the responseType is “callback” as above the JSON is passed to a function to handle this response type. (the var “response” contains the JSON above)

STUFF.callback = function(response){
    if(typeof response.callback =='function'){
        console.log("All Good")
        response.callback(response);
    }else{
        console.log("Hmm... Cant find function",response.callback );
    }
}


STUFF.TestCallBack = function(data){
    alert("it worked"); 
}

But when I do this I get the error “response.callback is not a function”.

Any comments on why this is not working and how to do this properly would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

A String is a String, not a Function.

response.callback() doesn’t work because it is the same as "STUFF.TestCallback"() not STUFF.TestCallback()

You probably want to have the data structured something more like "callback": "TestCallback" then then do:

STUFF[response.callback](response);

Here you use the String to access a property of STUFF. (foo.bar and foo['bar'] being equivalent.)