Wait for AJAX before continuing through separate function

codeigniter, javascript, jquery

Solution

AJAX stands for asynchronous. That means that in your original code, `saveRecord` will be executed before the client will receive the response from the server (and, depending on the `$.ajax` implementation, it might be before the client will send the request to the server).

Additionally, you seem to misunderstand how functions work in JS. `var category = autoSelectCategory(payee);` will set the category to the return value of `autoSelectCategory`; but the `autoSelectCategory` function in your code returns nothing.

From the other side, the `data` return value of your anonymous function could only be used by `$.ajax` function (and `$.ajax` likely ignores the `success` parameter return value).

Here is the code that should work:

function parseRow(row){
    var rowArray     = row.trim().split(",");
    var date         = rowArray[0];
    var checknum     = rowArray[1];
    var payee        = rowArray[2];
    var memo         = rowArray[3];
    var amount       = rowArray[4];

    autoSelectCategory(payee, function (category) {    
        saveRecord(date, checkNum, payee, memo, category, payment, deposit);
    });
}

function autoSelectCategory(payee, callback) {
    $.ajax({
        async: false,
        url: "autoselectcategory",
        dataType: "json",
        data: {
            string: payee
        },
        success: callback
    });
}

Problem

Original source