Nested XMLHttpRequests in extension not working

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The following reads data from a json file generated by a database call.

function loadJSON(callback) {   
  var xobj = new XMLHttpRequest();
  xobj.overrideMimeType("application/json");
  xobj.open('GET', 'next.php', true);
  xobj.onreadystatechange = function () {
    if (xobj.readyState == 4 && xobj.status == "200") {
      callback(JSON.parse(xobj.responseText));
    }
  };
  xobj.send(null);  
}

The following uses the above function to select a random url and change the url when user clicks button.

var page = '';
var nextpageButton = document.getElementById('nextpage');
nextpageButton.addEventListener('click', function() {
  loadJSON(function(json) {
    var limit = json.length;
    var i = ((Math.floor(Math.random()*limit)+1) - 1);
    page = (json[i].sites);
    chrome.tabs.query({currentWindow: true, active: true}, function (tab) {
      chrome.tabs.update(tab.id, {url: page});
    });
  });
});

Both above functions work perfectly.

The following adds data to databse when the user clicks button. This works perfectly as long as I don’t add a nested XMLHttpRequest on success.

var like = document.getElementById('tu');
like.addEventListener('click', function() {
  var select_element = document.getElementById('cat');
  var cat = select_element.value;
  if (cat != 0) {
    chrome.tabs.query({active: true, lastFocusedWindow: true}, tabs => {
      var current_url = tabs[0].url;
      var current_title = tabs[0].title;
      var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
      xhttp.open("POST", "add.php", true);
      xhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
      xhttp.send("sites="+current_url+"&title="+current_title+"&vote_up=1&vote_down=0");
    });
  } else { 
   select_element.focus();
  }
});

Things start to break when I add the following to the above code:

//this is the last row from above code before adding new code
xhttp.send("sites="+current_url+"&title="+current_title+"&vote_up=1&vote_down=0");

//this is new code
xhttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
  if(xhttp.readyState == 4 && xhttp.status == 200) {
    loadJSON(function(json) {
      var limit = json.length;
      var i = ((Math.floor(Math.random()*limit)+1) - 1);
      page = (json[i].sites);
      chrome.tabs[0].update(tab.id, {url: page});
    });
  }
}

When I add the above code, which should just be calling the first function, I start getting javascript error Cannot read property 'url' of undefined.

Se the question is… if javascript reads in a linear manner from top to bottom, why would the property become undefined with the addition of the loadJSON(function(json)? I can remove that function and everything works again. This is not a variable that is defined by the XMLHttpRequest so why would a nested request stop the variable from being loaded correctly?

More important how do I fix this?

55 thoughts on “Nested XMLHttpRequests in extension not working”

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