Passing Alphanumeric variables to JQuery Ajax

Question

I've got the following JQuery code, which works fine if the VendorDropDown.ClientID is an integer, or a string that can be converted to an integer, but breaks if I try to use a string value like "Microsoft". The PopulateSoftware function is an Asp.Net WebMethod that takes a string parameter named vendorId.

var pageUrl = '<%=ResolveUrl("~/Default.aspx")%>'
function PopulateSoftwareDropdown() {
    alert('{vendorId: ' + $('#<%=VendorDropDown.ClientID%>').val() + '}');
    $.ajax({    
        type: "POST",
        url: pageUrl + '/PopulateSoftware',
        data: '{vendorId: ' + $('#<%=VendorDropDown.ClientID%>').val() + '}',
        contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
        dataType: "json",
        success: OnSoftwarePopulated,
        failure: function (response) {
            alert(response.d);
        }
    });
}

Answer 1

Use

 data: '{vendorId: \'' + $('#<%=VendorDropDown.ClientID%>').val() + '\'}'

this will effectively wrap the value with single quotes, which means that it is a string value..

---

more correctly it should be

data: {'vendorId': $('#<%=VendorDropDown.ClientID%>').val() }

This will pass as data the object we create (the {..} part), which will be converted by jquery to the correct format (string)