[wlug] AJAX and jQuery help please?

26 Nov 2009

      Hi all!

Is there anyone out there who is adept with jQuery, javascript and
AJAX?  I have an ajax call in the application that I am working on
that is the root of a Heisenbug that is causing me some grief!

I have pruned the call to the collowing code:

<code>
function addPublication ( pubID, pubName, pubCategories ){
	alert ( "in addPublication" );
	var xhr = $.ajax ({
		url: "/publisher/ajax/addpub.php",
		type: "POST",
		data: ({
			id: pubID,
			name: pubName,
			"categories[]": pubCategories
		}),
		success: function(){
			alert ( "We're Back from addpublication" );
		}
	});
	alert ( "*" + xhr.responseText + "*" );
};

</code>

The post that is generated from this is correct and if I manually send
that post data to the php script I get the expected results (at the
moment all the script does is generate an empty page with a "print_r"
of the post data.  However, the ajax call randomly returns correctly
or returns with "error - undefined error."  Firebug is distressingly
unhelpful in that all it does is show the url in red in the console
and no errors or anything!

I have found on occasion that erasing the url and retyping it exactly
will cause the bug to disappear but any editting of the js file after
that will cause the bug to return.

The ironic thing is that when I have the full function of the php
script activated it actually does the task that it is supposed to do
correctly - except that I have to refresh the page to see the result
instead of the ajax refreshing the page properly.

Argh!

can anyone shed some light?

--
James Pluck
A Cruce Salus

Charles de Gaulle  - "The better I get to know men, the more I find
myself loving dogs." -
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/charles_de_gaulle.html