$.ajax ex.message,jQuery.ajax response data is undefined

I just faced a similar problem.

Investigating the response in Developer tools, i see that even though the parameter data was passed as 'undefined' to the 'success' function call - the actual response body did contain the expected string.

The response can be deeper investigated in the developer tools

-Network Tab -> press 'Start Capturing' - and on the actual request record - click on 'Go to detailed view').

The problem on my side resided in malformed Content-Type headers of the response. The response string was passed correctly, and was even correctly interpreted in other browsers (FF, Chrome, Safari).

The headers set up on the server were, in this order:

Response.AddHeader "Content-type", "text/html;charset=UTF-8"

Response.AddHeader "Content-type","application/json"

Response.ContentType = "application/json"

The result received by the client (investigated in network detailed view, like above mentioned) was:

Content-Type text/html;charset=UTF-8,application/json

It seems that IE (8,9) is picky about the headers, specifically the Content-Type.

This lead in IE9, IE8 to the parameter data being passed as undefined

and complete subsequent failure.

As soon as i removed the unwanted headers, i.e. this line:

Response.AddHeader "Content-type", "text/html;charset=UTF-8"

The final conten-type received by the client was only:

Content-Type application/json

And finally, the data parameter in this part of the ajax call was no longer "undefined", but the expected "object"

success: function(data, textStatus, XMLHttpRequest){

alert(typeof(data));

},

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The server-side scripting language in this case is ASP's VBscript, you should know your corresponding syntax for the server-side header setting in order to know what to look for

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