Using $.ajaxSetup() to append a data object to AJAX calls in Spine

Question

I am using the $.ajaxSetup() function to append some additional params to each of my AJAX calls in Spine. However it isn't working as i'd expect it to.

If i call $ajaxSetup() as follows, my GET requests work fine, but my params are overidden with any POST requests and are not included in the form data as id expect:

$.ajaxSetup
      data: "[email protected]&user_token=foobar"

As a result i tried changing my data string to an object to see if that made any difference:

settings =
        data:
          user_email:'[email protected]'
          user_token:'foobar'

$.ajaxSetup settings

However that causes my URL's in my requests to appear malformed, like so: http://dev.myapp.com:5000/api/v1/posts?[object%20Object]

I've tried recreating this in JSFiddle (my fiddle) to test that i wasn't going mad and it seems that my approach works as i'd expect over there. For GET requests, a string of my data object is appended to the end of my URL and with POST requests the data object is appended to the form data sent with the request.

So what am i doing wrong? Is this a bug in Spine or something else?

jQuery Version: 2.0.3

Answer 1

It looks like the problem is that spine sets data as a string:

  type: 'POST'
  contentType: 'application/json'
  data: @record.toJSON()

(from the spine source)

You can use ajaxPrefilter to fix up requests before they are sent. Since the data is a JSON string you have a couple of options:

• add your parameters to the JSON (by decoding it, using $.extend, then encoding it again)

• add your parameters as custom HTTP headers instead of POST parameters

• add the parameters to the URL, even on POST requests