Question

We have a JavaScript search script that pulls data from the Bing API. However, when no results are found for the users query, it just displays a blank page. How can we make the script display a no results message such as “Nothing found.”?

ajax({
    type:"GET",
    url:"http://api.bing.net/json.aspx?appId=APPID&query=QUERY&sources=web&adult=strict&web.count=10&cc=en&jsontype=callback&jsoncallback=?",
    dataType:"jsonp",
    success:function(a){
        $ID("results").innerHTML="<h2>Search</h2>";
        for(var c=0;c<a.SearchResponse.Web.Results.length;c++){
            var d=a.SearchResponse.Web.Results[c];
            $ID("results").innerHTML+="<a href=\""+d.Url+"\" id=\"result\"><div id=\"title\">"+d.Title+"</div><div id=\"url\">"+d.DisplayUrl+"</div>"+d.Description+"</a>"
        }
    }
})

Answer 1

   function noResults() {
     $ID("results").innerHTML="<h2>Nothing to see here...</h2>";
   }

   ajax({
        type:"GET",
        url:"http://api.bing.net/json.aspx?appId=APPID&query=QUERY&sources=web&adult=strict&web.count=10&cc=en&jsontype=callback&jsoncallback=?",
        dataType:"jsonp",
        success:function(a){
            if (!a.SearchResponse.Web.Results ||
                !a.SearchResponse.Web.Results.length) {
              noResults();
            } else {
              // results processing here
            }
        },
        error : function (a) {
            noResults();
        }
   })

Probably not what you want, but it’s more or less is what you asked for.