synchronous jquery json request

Question

I need to make a synchronous request to the last.fm API, but when I use GET and json together, the request becomes asynchronous.

my code:

$.ajax({
      async: false,
    dataType: "json",
 url: "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=artist.getimages&artist="+artist+"&api_key="+apiKey+"&format=json&callback=?",
 success: function(html){
       imgURL = html.images.image[1].sizes.size[0]["#text"];
 }
});

If I remove dataType: "json" or use POST, it's synchronous again, but I'm dependant on using both json and GET.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Ah, this is because you're trying to do cross-domain requests, and cross-domain requests rely on a dynamic script tag, which can never be synchronous, must use datatype json and the GET method.

If you do a POST or remove the datatype, you will get an access error because of same-origin policy. It will return immediately, but as a failure.