Question

So I’m doing a GET with jQuery Ajax like this:

$.ajax({
   //...
   headers: {'a':{'t':'text'}, 'b': {'s':'text2'}}
   //...
});

According to (my interpretation of) the jQuery docs, headers should go in as

a: {'t':'text'}
b: {'s':'text2'}

Instead, on firebug (and in Fiddler) I see:

a: [object Object]  
b: [object Object]

Now if I pass it like this:

$.ajax({
   //...
   headers: {'a':JSON.stringify({t:'text'}), 'b': JSON.stringify({'s':'text2'})}
   //...
});

firebug shows them as:

a: {'t':'text'}
b: {'s':'text2'}

JSON.stringify is from Douglas Crockford’s library.

The part I hate about the second approach is that now I need to loop thru my object, and stringify child objects. (Note, I have no idea what’s inside the object so I cannot do individual setHeader())

My question is: Is my understanding incorrect of how headers are parsed or am I overlooking something?

Also, I’m looking for the community’s inputs on efficiently looping thru the JSON object and stringifying the children.

Update: Its pretty clear that my initial understanding was incorrect.

Anyway, any inputs on how to traverse the object and JSON.stringify children efficiently?

Answer 1

Your initial understanding was incorrect. HTTP headers are strings such as:

X-Some-Header: Some Value

and, as such, you must provide a string as the name and one as the value. Your corrected version where you stringify the children of the top-most object provides just such a string-name/string-value structure.