Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

JavaScript Asynchronous Programming with JavaScript Asynchronous JavaScript with Callbacks Managing Nested Callbacks

Leonardo Cavalcanti
Leonardo Cavalcanti
5,308 Points

generateHTML is called without passing any parameters but it has "data" for a parameter, how is the data being passed in

The function generateHTML has (data) for a parameter, but on line 44 it is being called as a callback inside the method getJSON without any parameters, how then is it functioning normally? In other words, how is the function generateHTML receiving its data for its generating the HTML without anything being given to it?

const astrosUrl = 'http://api.open-notify.org/astros.json';
const wikiUrl = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/';
const peopleList = document.getElementById('people');
const btn = document.querySelector('button');

// Make an AJAX request
function getJSON(url, callback) {
  const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
  xhr.open('GET', url);
  xhr.onload = () => {
    if(xhr.status === 200) {
      let data = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText);
      return callback(data);
    }
  };
  xhr.send();
}

// Generate the markup for each profile
function generateHTML(data) {
  const section = document.createElement('section');
  peopleList.appendChild(section);
  // Check if request returns a 'standard' page from Wiki
  if (data.type === 'standard') {
    section.innerHTML = `
      <img src=${data.thumbnail.source}>
      <h2>${data.title}</h2>
      <p>${data.description}</p>
      <p>${data.extract}</p>
    `;
  } else {
    section.innerHTML = `
      <img src="img/profile.jpg" alt="ocean clouds seen from space">
      <h2>${data.title}</h2>
      <p>Results unavailable for ${data.title}</p>
      ${data.extract_html}
    `;
  }
}

btn.addEventListener('click', (event) => 
  getJSON(astrosUrl, (data) => {
    data.people.map(person => {
      getJSON(wikiUrl + person.name, generateHTML);
    });
    event.target.remove();
  }));

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,786 Points

The callback is being passed as an argument here, it is not being called (yet).
When it does get called from inside of the getJSON code (on line 13), it will be given the argument it needs.

Leonardo Cavalcanti
Leonardo Cavalcanti
5,308 Points

So the "return callback(data);" is invoked so the parameter "data" here becomes the parameter for generateHTML(data) ?