JavaScript: Global variables after Ajax requests

Question

the question is fairly simple and technical:

var it_works = false;

$.post("some_file.php", '', function(data) {

     it_works = true;

});

alert(it_works); # false (yes, that 'alert' has to be here and not inside $.post itself)

What I want to achieve is:

alert(it_works); # true

Is there a way to do that? If not can $.post() return a value to be applied to it_works?

Answer 1

What you expect is the synchronous (blocking) type request.

var it_works = false;

jQuery.ajax({
  type: "POST",
  url: 'some_file.php',
  success: function (data) {
    it_works = true;
  }, 
  async: false // <- this turns it into synchronous
});​

// Execution is BLOCKED until request finishes.

// it_works is available
alert(it_works);

Requests are asynchronous (non-blocking) by default which means that the browser won't wait for them to be completed in order to continue its work. That's why your alert got wrong result.

Now, with jQuery.ajax you can optionally set the request to be synchronous, which means that the script will only continue to run after the request is finished.

---

The RECOMMENDED way, however, is to refactor your code so that the data would be passed to a callback function as soon as the request is finished. This is preferred because blocking execution means blocking the UI which is unacceptable. Do it this way:

$.post("some_file.php", '', function(data) {
    iDependOnMyParameter(data);
});

function iDependOnMyParameter(param) {
    // You should do your work here that depends on the result of the request!
    alert(param)
}

// All code here should be INDEPENDENT of the result of your AJAX request
// ...

Asynchronous programming is slightly more complicated because the consequence of making a request is encapsulated in a function instead of following the request statement. But the realtime behavior that the user experiences can be significantly better because they will not see a sluggish server or sluggish network cause the browser to act as though it had crashed. Synchronous programming is disrespectful and should not be employed in applications which are used by people.

Douglas Crockford (YUI Blog)