[jQuery] save ajax query to global variable

[Vaidotas Zemlys]

Hi,

When trying out jquery, I ran into seemingly very simple problem. I
did a search on internet and did not get any satisfactory result. I am
suspecting that the mistake is very simple, so anyone more experienced
can help me.

What I am trying to do is load data from server, then present it in
the table, and plot it later. Since I am intending to use flot plugin,
and it accepts arrays as an argument, I thought that I load the file,
save it to some array, and then plot it when time comes (when user
presses something, etc.) So my javascript code goes like this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.3.2.js"></
script>
 <script type="text/
javascript">
     var tb1=[];
     $(document).ready(function() {
             $.post("data/echocsv.php", function(text) {
                 tb1=text.split("\n");
                 })
                alert(tb1);
        });
 </script>

echocsv.php is very simple, it just grabs csv file (text file) and
returns it:
<?
$ff=file_get_contents("data.csv");
echo $ff;
?>

Yet when I run this script, nothing happens. If I move the alert into
callback function, then everything is alright. I understand that it is
possible that ajax query is not performed before the alert. But I did
not find out how to know when the query is succesfull. From examples
in the web I saw, that .ajax call is more frequently used, maybe I
should use it also?

Thanks for any help,

Vaidotas