Scary AJAX error May15 '06

While doing some AJAX work this morning, I kept getting this error, which looks pretty scary:

Error: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80040111 (NSERRORNOTAVAILABLE) [nsIXMLHttpRequest.status]" nsresult: "0x80040111 (NSERRORNOTAVAILABLE)" location: "JS frame :: http://192.168.3.16/liso/javascript/servicerep.js :: checkNameStateChange :: line 50" data: no] Source File: http://192.168.3.16/liso/javascript/servicerep.js Line: 50

Ugly, eh? Yuck.

It was "tripping up" on the line in my JavaScript that began like this:

if (xmlHttp.status == 200)

Now why would it stop there?

Anyone familiar with AJAX would recognize that line as the "check" for data that’s been returned from a remote server call. In other words, if our remote server call returns data, the status would be 200. If not, the status would be 204, which means No Content.

I was positive the remote call returned data, because I checked the query myself.

Turns out my problem had to do with the "trigger" that initially began the AJAX request.

The "trigger" is an HTML form button, which looked like this:

<input type="submit" id="addbutton" value="Add New Account" />

This is just a simple "form submit" button.

However, it doesn’t actually submit the form through the action attribute in the <form> element. Rather, I use the id attribute, "addbutton", to grab the "click" event.

Long story short (I think I already made this too long), I had to change the submit button to this:

<input type="button" id="addbutton" value="Add New Account" />

You see, it was trying to submit the form, at the same time as running the AJAX call, behind the scenes. By changing the <input> element to a button, this resolved the problem.

So, to sum this jibberish up - if you ever see that error - check your "trigger."

Categories: JavaScript , Tips

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