jquery ui: cannot call methods on dialog prior to initialization; attempted to call method 'close'

Question

I am using jquery ui dialog, I download it from jquery ui website, version is jquery-ui-1.10.2.custom.min.js, and jquery is jquery-1.9.1.js which is bundled with jquery ui js, but now I am encountering a question: when dialog is opened and click save button, I want the dialog to be closed, here is my code:

$(function(){
 $("#dialog-form").dialog({
     autoOpen: false,
     height: 350,
     width: 450,
     modal: true,
     buttons: {
       "save": function() {
           if(!checkDept()){
               return ;
           }
           $.post('dept_save.do', 
                 {'dept.deptId':$("#dialog_dept_deptId").val(), 
                  'dept.deptName':$("#dialog_dept_deptName").val(),
                  'dept.manager':$("#dialog_dept_manager").val(),
                 },function(data, status, xhr){
                     if(status == 'success'){
                         alert('save success');
                         $(this).dialog("close");
                     }else{
                         alert('error:'+data);
                     }
                  }
                 ,"json");
       }
     },
     close: function() {
         $(this).dialog("close");
     }
   });

     /* to open dialog*/
    $("#add").click(function(){
        $("#dialog-form").dialog("open");
    });

now when I close the 'save success' popuped dialog, dialog-form dialog was not closed, and an error occurs:

Uncaught Error: cannot call methods on dialog prior to initialization; attempted to call method 'close' jquery-1.9.1.js:507.

and there is another error:

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token o jquery-1.9.1.js:541

thanks.

Answer 1

You are losing the context of this once you are inside of $.post(). Before your $.post, save the context this in a variable inside of that save button function.

$('#dialog-form').dialog({
     // .....
     buttons: {
        'save': function() { 

            var $this = $(this); 
                      // -this- is still the original context 
                      // of $("#dialog-form")

            $.post({
               /// ...
               $this.dialog('close'); // <-- used here
            });
        }       
    }
});

Answer 2

When you initialize a dialog by calling the .dialog(options) method, a new dialog is created, but it's not associated to the original div that you want to convert into dialog (the '#dialog-form' in your sample code). The dialog(options) function returns the element containing the dialog data. So, if you do it this way:

var myDialog = $("#dialog-form").dialog(options);

You can then call the open method like this:

myDialog.dialog('open');

If you want to find the element contianing the dialog, it's the closest div with "ui-dialog-content" class:

var myDialog = $('#dialog-form').closest('div.ui-dialog-content');

The dialog data is the uiDialog data which you'll see if you look at this element data:

myDialog.data();

Answer 3

$(this) isn't targeting the dialog inside of $.post, you'll need to store a reference to it.

var self = this; // add this
$.post(..., function(){
    $(self).dialog("close"); // modify this to use self

Answer 4

I had to do the following to get my dialog closed.

 $("#Note").dialog({
        autoOpen: true,            
        modal: true,
        create: function (e, ui) {
          //
        },
        open: function () {
            //
        },            
        buttons: {
                //
                $(".ui-dialog-titlebar-close").trigger('click');
            }
        }
    });