Why does mockjax return an altered response to my Ajax consumer?

Question

I'm using mockjax to simulate an Ajax call, but I'm experiencing that the data received by my Ajax callback is different from what I pass to mockjax (via the 'responseText' parameter). In this example, I've chosen the response to be '14.0', but the callback receives '14' instead:

$.mockjax({
    url: "/test",
    contentType: "text/json",
    responseText: "14.0"
});

$.ajax({
   url: "/test",
   datatype: "json"
}).done(function(data) {
   alert(data);
});​

Why is it that the received data is different from what I specify to responseText? See this fiddle for a working example; a popup dialog will show the string received by the callback, should be '14'.

EDIT:

This is the popup I get when running the fiddle, demonstrating the altered response from mockjax.

Also fixed the fiddle.

Coridon

Answer 1

If you change two small things the above snippet will work as you expect.

In the above code snippet the contentType mentioned in $.mockjax is "text/json". In that case the responseText needs to be an object that represents the JSON. https://github.com/appendto/jquery-mockjax

$.mockjax({
    url: "/test",
    contentType: "text/json",
    responseText: { number: 14.0 }
});

Also, in the $.ajax call the datatype key should be dataType http://api.jquery.com/jquery.ajax/

$.ajax({
    url: "/test",
    dataType: "json"
}).done(function(data) {
    console.log(data);
});

I've made the changes in the following jsFiddle http://jsfiddle.net/elijahmanor/BtuW8/

I hope that helps you past the issue.

Amena

Thanks, it seems wrapping the string in an object ({number: "14.0"}) makes all the difference. Do you know why that is? In the real Web service I just return a plain string, but it could be this isn't proper JSON for all I know. – Coridon

It seems if I want a plain string value, I should be using text/plain for content type as opposed to JSON. I guess I learnt something :) – Coridon

If you wanted to keep it as JSON and keep the .0 then you an put the number in quotes as you did... jsfiddle.net/elijahmanor/BtuW8/1 In JavaScript all numbers are floats. You could have kept the JSON like the above and then formatted the number like this... console.log( data.number.toFixed( 1 ) ) as seen here jsfiddle.net/elijahmanor/BtuW8/2 If you'd like to return valid JSON I would suggest you test it with a validator jsonlint.com or use a library on your server that exports to JSON – Amena