jQuery ajax call in onunload handler firing AFTER getting the page on a manual refresh. How do I guarantee onunload happens first?

Question

I have a situation where on page unload I am firing a request to delete the draft of a user\'s work. This works fine until a user chooses to refresh the page, whereupon ins

Answer 1

Making the XHR request synchronous should delay the loading of the new page until after the request is complete. I don't know how jQuery runs its synchronous XHR requests under the hood, but here's how you can do it using plain JavaScript:

var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
// or new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") for some versions of IE
request.open("GET", "/some/url", false);
request.send(null);

var result = request.responseText;
alert(result);

Putting that in your unload handler should make the browser wait until "/some/url" is loaded before it moves on to the next page.