How to get response status code from jQuery.ajax?

In the following code, all I am trying to do is to get the HTTP response code from a jQuery.ajax call. Then, if the code is 301 (Moved Permanently), display the 'Location' response header:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
  <title>jQuery 301 Trial</title>
  <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.5.1.min.js"></script>

  <script type="text/javascript">
  function get_resp_status(url) {
    $.ajax({
      url: url,
      complete: function (jqxhr, txt_status) {
        console.log ("Complete: [ " + txt_status + " ] " + jqxhr);
        // if (response code is 301) {
        console.log ("Location: " + jqxhr.getResponseHeader("Location"));
        // }
      }
    });
  }
  </script>
  <script type="text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function(){
    $('a').mouseenter(
      function () {
        get_resp_status(this.href);
      },
      function () {
      }
    );
  });
  </script>
</head>
<body>
  <a href="http://ow.ly/4etPl">Test 301 redirect</a>
  <a href="http://cnn.com/not_found">Test 404 not found</a>
</body>
</html>

Can someone point out where I am going wrong? When I check the 'jqxhr' object in Firebug, I can't find the status code, nor the 'Location' response header. I set the breakpoint on last line of 'complete'.

Thanks much.


I see the status field on the jqXhr object, here is a fiddle with it working:

http://jsfiddle.net/magicaj/55HQq/3/

$.ajax({
    //...        
    success: function(data, textStatus, xhr) {
        console.log(xhr.status);
    },
    complete: function(xhr, textStatus) {
        console.log(xhr.status);
    } 
});

It is probably more idiomatic jQuery to use the statusCode property of the parameter object passed to the the $.ajax function:

$.ajax({
  statusCode: {
    500: function(xhr) {
      if(window.console) console.log(xhr.responseText);
    }
  }
});

However, as Livingston Samuel said, it is not possible to catch 301 status codes in javascript.


Came across this old thread searching for a similar solution myself and found the accepted answer to be using .complete() method of jquery ajax. I quote the notice on jquery website here:

The jqXHR.success(), jqXHR.error(), and jqXHR.complete() callbacks are deprecated as of jQuery 1.8. To prepare your code for their eventual removal, use jqXHR.done(), jqXHR.fail(), and jqXHR.always() instead.

To know the status code of a ajax response, one can use the following code:

$.ajax( url [, settings ] )
.always(function (jqXHR) {
    console.log(jqXHR.status);
});

Works similarily for .done() and .fail()