Synchronous ajax in node.js server

Question

I am trying to get html code from a series of cross domain urls with my node.js server using this function I have pasted in. If I do this asynchronously, I am successful at getting the needed html; however, I am having a hard time getting everything else that goes on outside of this function to work properly. Doing this synchronously, as I have it now, makes everything outside of this function work the way it should, but none of my ajax calls are successful and this.url is undefined.

I am using the jquery node module to do this btw.

This is the error that gets logged in the console : [TypeError: Cannot read property 'headers' of undefined]

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

function myFunction( catname, myurl ){

var htmlresult="";

  $.ajax({
    type: "GET",
    url : "http://"+myurl,
    dataType: 'html',
    context: this,
    async: false,
    cache: false,
    error: function(xhr, status, ethrown){
      console.log("THERE WAS AN ERROR");
      console.log(this.url);
      console.log(catname);
      console.log(status);
      console.log(ethrown);

      htmlresult = myurl;
    },
    success : function(result){
      console.log(this.url);
      console.log("SUCCESS");
      console.log(catname);
      //console.log(result);

      htmlresult = result;
    }
})

return htmlresult;
}

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Answer 1

You should not really use the synchronous request mode in this case to do your job. If you are using node and want to carry out some work in a synchronous fashion you should use promise/deffered concept. See example below

var Deferred = require("promised-io/promise").Deferred;
var def = new Deferred();

request(this.getUrl("statusObject"), function(err, resp, body) {
    if(!err){
        def.resolve(body);
    }
}

def.promise.then(function(val){
    //Do something.
});