Is there any way to wait for AJAX response and halt execution?

Question

New, using jquery's promise implementation:

function functABC(){

  // returns a promise that can be used later. 

  return $.ajax({
    url: 'myPage.php',
    data: {id: id}
  });
}


functABC().then( response => 
  console.log(response);
);

Nice read e.g. here.

This is not "synchronous" really, but I think it achieves what the OP intends.

Old, (jquery's async option has since been deprecated):

All Ajax calls can be done either asynchronously (with a callback function, this would be the function specified after the 'success' key) or synchronously - effectively blocking and waiting for the servers answer. To get a synchronous execution you have to specify

async: false 

like described here

Note, however, that in most cases asynchronous execution (via callback on success) is just fine.

When using promises they can be used in a promise chain. async=false will be deprecated so using promises is your best option.

function functABC() {
  return new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
    $.ajax({
      url: 'myPage.php',
      data: {id: id},
      success: function(data) {
        resolve(data) // Resolve promise and go to then()
      },
      error: function(err) {
        reject(err) // Reject the promise and go to catch()
      }
    });
  });
}

functABC().then(function(data) {
  // Run this when your request was successful
  console.log(data)
}).catch(function(err) {
  // Run this when promise was rejected via reject()
  console.log(err)
})

The simple answer is to turn off async. But that's the wrong thing to do. The correct answer is to re-think how you write the rest of your code.

Instead of writing this:

function functABC(){
    $.ajax({
        url: 'myPage.php',
        data: {id: id},
        success: function(data) {
            return data;
        }
    });
}

function foo () {
    var response = functABC();
    some_result = bar(response);
    // and other stuff and
    return some_result;
}

You should write it like this:

function functABC(callback){
    $.ajax({
        url: 'myPage.php',
        data: {id: id},
        success: callback
    });
}

function foo (callback) {
    functABC(function(data){
        var response = data;
        some_result = bar(response);
        // and other stuff and
        callback(some_result);
    })
}

That is, instead of returning result, pass in code of what needs to be done as callbacks. As I've shown, callbacks can be nested to as many levels as you have function calls.

---

A quick explanation of why I say it's wrong to turn off async:

Turning off async will freeze the browser while waiting for the ajax call. The user cannot click on anything, cannot scroll and in the worst case, if the user is low on memory, sometimes when the user drags the window off the screen and drags it in again he will see empty spaces because the browser is frozen and cannot redraw. For single threaded browsers like IE7 it's even worse: all websites freeze! Users who experience this may think you site is buggy. If you really don't want to do it asynchronously then just do your processing in the back end and refresh the whole page. It would at least feel not buggy.