I've heard a number of questions on how to use GlideAJAX to return multiple values. It wasn't clear in the wiki (until now) how to do this so most people were sending a string array of values to be parsed on the client. This works but there's much more you can do since the response is an XML document. Let's start with the requirement.I want an AJAX service to get a favorite value for a particular item.I also want the ability to return all favorite values if I don't provide an item.First we need an AJAX Processor. These are specified in script include records. The script include must have "client callable" field enabled and the script class must extend AbstractAjaxProcessor.

AJAX Processor Script Include

/* * MyFavoritesAjax script include Description - sample AJAX processor returning multiple value pairs /var MyFavoritesAjax = Class.create();MyFavoritesAjax.prototype = Object.extendsObject(AbstractAjaxProcessor, {/ * method available to client scripts call using: * var gajax = new GlideAjax("MyFavoritesAjax"); * gajax.addParam("sysparm_name", "getFavorites"); */ajaxFunction_getFavorites : function() {// build new response xml element for resultvar result = this.newItem("result");// get parameter from client request, force to string so switch is happyvar item = this.getParameter("sysparm_item") + "";// add requested item to response for debuggingresult.setAttribute("requested_item", item);// get item favorite or return allswitch (item) {case "color":this._addFavorite("color", "blue");break;case "beer":this._addFavorite("beer", "lager");break;case "pet":this._addFavorite("pet", "dog");break;default:// add message to returnresult.setAttribute("message", "no item or invalid item specified, returning all available items");// no item specified, return all favoritesthis._addFavorite("color", "blue");this._addFavorite("beer", "lager");this._addFavorite("pet", "dog");}// elements are returned to the client through the inherited methods of AbstractAjaxProcessor},_addFavorite : function(name, value) {//create new favorite node with attributesvar favs = this.newItem("favorite");favs.setAttribute("name", name);favs.setAttribute("value", value);},type : "MyFavoritesAjax"

});

Now we need a client side script to build and submit the AJAX request, plus a callback function to process the results from the server. In this example lets assume we only want the favorite value for "beer". We'll specify this in the "sysparm_item" parameter of the request.

Client Script with Specified Favorite Item Parameter

// new GlideAjax object referencing name of AJAX script includevar gajax = new GlideAjax("MyFavoritesAjax");// add name parameter to define which function we want to call// method name in script include will be ajaxFunction_getFavoritesgajax.addParam("sysparm_name", "getFavorites");// add optional item to get favoritegajax.addParam("sysparm_item", "beer");// submit request to server, call ajaxResponse function with server responsegajax.getXML(ajaxResponse);function ajaxResponse(serverResponse) {// get result element and attributesvar result = serverResponse.responseXML.getElementsByTagName("result");var message = result[0].getAttribute("message");var reqItem = result[0].getAttribute("requested_item");// check for message attribute and alert userif (message)alert(message);// build output to display on client for testingvar output = "";// get favorite elementsvar favorites = serverResponse.responseXML.getElementsByTagName("favorite");for ( var i = 0; i < favorites.length; i++) {var name = favorites.getAttribute("name");var value = favorites.getAttribute("value");output += name + " = " + value + "\n";}alert(output);