Parse JSON with AJAX

Question

I am trying to parse a JSON result with AJAX.

My JSON looks like this

[{
 "_id" : "54fb09b7d059bdf3107f9486",
 "lastName" : "Record",
 "firstName" : "First",
 "__v" : 0
 }, {
 "_id" : "54fb0a2fd059bdf3107f9487",
 "lastName" : "Record",
 "firstName" : "First",
 "__v" : 0
 }
]

I call this in Javascript

$.getJSON('api/people', function(data) {
 item3="+data.item3+"</p>");
 $.each(data,function(i,j){
 content ='<span>'+j[i].firstName+'<br />'+j[i].lastName+'<br /></span>';
 });
 alert(content);
 });

Unfortunately I get "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'firstName' of undefined" in the console.

Can someone please tell me how to properly parse this JSON?

• Ram: The posted code actually doesn't reach the $.each because there is a syntax error. That being said, j.firstName is what you want. $.getJSON parses the responseText for you!

Answer 1

jQuery.each's second argument (the function executed for each element) takes two arguments (in your example, i and j), the first representing the key and the second the value, so there's no need for j[i].

This should work:

$.getJSON('api/people', function(data) {
 $.each(data,function(i, item){
 content ='<span>'+item.firstName+'<br />'+item.lastName+'<br /></span>';
 });
 alert(content);
});