jQuery AJAX and handling different dataTypes
Question
I'm using ASP.Net MVC, but this applies to any framework.
I'm making an Ajax call to my server, which most of the time returns plain old HTML, however if there is an error, I'd like it to return a JSON object with a status message (and a few other things). There doesn't appear to be a way for the dataType option in the jQuery call to handle this well. By default it seems to parse everything as html, leading to a <div> being populated with "{ status: 'error', message: 'something bad happened'}" .
[Edit] Ignoring the dataType object and letting jQuery figure out doesn't work either. It views the type of the result as a string and treats it as HTML.
One solution I came up with is to attempt to parse the result object as JSON. If that works we know it's a JSON object. If it throws an exception, it's HTML:
$.ajax({
data: {},
success: function(data, textStatus) {
try {
var errorObj = JSON.parse(data);
handleError(errorObj);
} catch(ex) {
$('#results').html(data);
}
},
dataType: 'html', // sometimes it is 'json' :-/
url: '/home/AjaxTest',
type: 'POST'
});
However, using an Exception in that way strikes me as pretty bad design (and unintuitive to say the least). Is there a better way? I thought of wrapping the entire response in a JSON object, but in this circumstance, I don't think that's an option.
Here's the solution that I got from Steve Willcock:
// ASP.NET MVC Action:
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult AjaxTest(int magic) {
try {
var someVal = GetValue();
return PartialView("DataPage", someVal);
} catch (Exception ex) {
this.HttpContext.Response.StatusCode = 500;
return Json(new { status = "Error", message = ex.Message });
}
}
// jQuery call:
$.ajax({
data: {},
success: function(data, textStatus) {
$('#results').html(data);
},
error: function() {
var errorObj = JSON.parse(XMLHttpRequest.responseText);
handleError(errorObj);
},
dataType: 'html',
url: '/home/AjaxTest',
type: 'POST'
});
6 answers
solution1
9 ACCPTED 2009-05-11 21:42:07
For your JSON errors you could return a 500 status code from the server rather than a 200. Then the jquery client code can use the error: handler on the $.ajax function for error handling. On a 500 response you can parse the JSON error object from the responseText, on a 200 response you can just bung your HTML in a div as normal.
solution2
6 2009-05-11 21:31:32
While Steve's idea is a good one, I'm adding this in for completeness.
It appears that if you specify a dataType of json but return HTML, jQuery handles it fine.
I tested this theory with the following code:
if($_GET['type'] == 'json') {
header('Content-type: application/json');
print '{"test":"hi"}';
exit;
} else {
header('Content-type: text/html');
print '<html><body><b>Test</b></body></html>';
exit;
}
The $_GET['type'] is just so I can control what to return while testing. In your situation you'd return one or the other depending on whether things went right or wrong. Past that, with this jQuery code:
$.ajax({
url: 'php.php?type=html', // return HTML in this test
dataType: 'json',
success: function(d) {
console.log(typeof d); // 'xml'
}
});
Even though we specified JSON as the dataType, jQuery (1.3.2) figures out that its not that.
$.ajax({
url: 'php.php?type=json',
dataType: 'json',
success: function(d) {
console.log(typeof d); // 'object'
}
});
So you could take advantage of this (as far as I know) undocumented behavior to do what you want.
solution3
3 2009-05-11 21:50:02
But why not return only JSON regardless of the status (success or error) on the POST and the use a GET to display the results?
It seems like a better approach if you ask me.
solution4
0 2014-05-19 02:53:59
I accomplished this by using the ajax success and error callbacks only. This way I can have mixed strings and json objects responses from the server.
Below I'm prepared to accept json, but if I get a status of "parsererror" (meaning jquery couldn't parse the incoming code as json since that's what I was expecting), but it got a request status of "OK" (200), then I handle the response as a string. Any thing other than a "parsererror" and "OK", I handle as an error.
$.ajax({
dataType: 'json',
url: '/ajax/test',
success: function (resp) {
// your response json object, see if status was set to error
if (resp.status == 'error') {
// log the detail error for the dev, and show the user a fail
console.log(resp);
$('#results').html('error occurred');
}
// you could handle other cases here
// or use a switch statement on the status value
},
error: function(request, status, error) {
// if json parse error and a 200 response, we expect this is our string
if(status == "parsererror" && request.statusText == "OK") {
$('#results').html(request.responseText);
} else {
// again an error, but now more detailed and not a parser error
// and we'll log for dev and show the user a fail
console.log(status + ": " + error.message);
$('#results').html('error occurred');
}
}
});
solution5
0 2010-08-26 19:32:04
Or you could always return a JSON response, and have one parameter as the HTML content.
Something like:
{
"success" : true,
"errormessage" : "",
"html" : "<div>blah</div>",
}
I think you'd only have to escape double quotes in the html value, and the json parser would undo that for you.
solution6
0 2012-03-06 19:31:32
I ran into this exact same issue with MVC/Ajax/JQuery and wanting to use multiple dataTypes (JSON and HTML). I have a AJAX request to uses an HTML dataType to return the data, but I attempt convert the data that comes back from the ajax request to a JSON object. I have a function like this that I call from my success callback:
_tryParseJson: function (data) {
var jsonObject;
try {
jsonObject = jQuery.parseJSON(data);
}
catch (err) {
}
return jsonObject;
}
I then assume that if the jsonObject and errorMessage property exist, that an error occured, otherwise an error did not occur.
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