jQuery $.ajax() function's error message source

From the jquery documentation:

error(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) Function

A function to be called if the request fails. The function is passed three arguments:
- The XMLHttpRequest object,
- a string describing the type of error that occurred, and
- an optional exception object, if one occurred.
Possible values for the second argument (besides null) are "timeout", "error", "notmodified" and "parsererror". This is an Ajax Event.

When you indicate just one parameter, it will be the xmlHttpRequestObject. You can get some good information from that. Sadly, most documentation out there doesn't have you set this up correctly. A good default template is:

error:function (xhRequest, errorText, thrownError)

Some good info you can get from xhRequest are:

• .status : 404: "not found", 500: "server error". This can sometimes be a big help.
• .responseText is information from the server, often useless in the case of an error but sometimes can be helpful.

The second value, a string, is sometimes helpful. Ah, I guess the possible values are mentioned in the documentation.

The 3rd parameter, whenever I checked it out, has always been undefined. I don't think it's ever useful.

I think the 3rd parameter errorThrown in the error callback function

 error(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown)

is exactly to send the text error message from server.

So if on a server you set:

 Response.Status = 403; Response.StatusDescription = "Password is not correct";

on a client you get:

 textStatus => "error", errorThrown => "Password is not correct"

Server part for Asp.net MVC will be:

 return new HttpStatusCodeResult(403, "Password is not correct");

THe Message is a return from the actual server side function that you are querying in your ajax call.

That way you can get the error or any other info on whether or not the server side code did what it was supposed to do.

Say if you return a string "success"

msg.val() will equal "success"

hope that helps