How to cancel an ajax request in Django when new page is requested

Question

In my web page (built on the Django platform), I have some jQuery that requests server data via an ajax request. How do I prevent the error function from executing when I click away from the page before the ajax request has responded.

Here is my jQuery call:

$(document).ready(function() {
 $.ajax( {
    url:'/server/url/',
    type: 'POST',
    data: {some..data},
    success:function(response) { do stuff with response },
    error: function() {alert('error')}
});

How do I prevent the alert from happening when I click away from the page (to a new page)?

Answer 1

Define a global variable:

var ajaxcancel = false;

No you need to make that true if user closes the window:

$(window).bind("beforeunload", function() {
    ajaxcancel = true;
});

And change the ajax error line to check for the value of that variable first:

...
error: function() {if (!ajaxcancel) alert('error'); }
...