Question

jQuery has a method that is automatically called prior to the success callback of an ajax request. How do you go about invoking this method on any arbitrary server response?

From the jQuery docs:

By default, data passed in to the data option as an object (technically, anything other than a string) will be processed and transformed into a query string, fitting to the default content-type “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”. If you want to send a DOMDocument, or other non-processed data, set this option to false.

Answer 1

Use the param-function documented here: http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.param/

jQuery.param( obj ): Create a serialized representation of an array or
object, suitable for use in a URL query string or Ajax request.

This is what jQuery does internally:

// Convert data if not already a string
if ( s.data && s.processData && typeof s.data !== "string" ) {
  s.data = jQuery.param( s.data, s.traditional );
}

You can read the full the source here: http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js