Ajax post request string data instead of object

Question

Similar to this question I need to send a string as data in a post request.

Unlike that one, I can't use an object because I have repeated items. As you can see in my sample data sn1, sn2 and sn3 are repeated several times on different datetimes.

Sample data:

&sn3=2013-2-4T12:43:52&sn3=2013-2-4T12:43:55&sn1=2013-2-4T12:43:59&sn1=2013-2-4T12:44:0&sn2=2013-2-4T12:44:0&sn3=2013-2-4T12:44:2&sn2=2013-2-4T12:44:3&sn3=2013-2-4T12:44:19&sn3=2013-2-4T12:44:19&sn3=2013-2-4T12:44:19&sn2=2013-2-4T12:44:19&sn3=2013-2-4T12:44:21&sn2=2013-2-4T12:44:22&sn2=2013-2-4T12:46:39&sn3=2013-2-4T12:46:42&sn2=2013-2-4T12:46:44&sn2=2013-2-4T12:46:45&sn2=2013-2-4T12:46:46&sn2=2013-2-4T12:47:27&sn2=2013-2-4T12:47:27&sn2=2013-2-4T12:49:44&sn2=2013-2-4T12:50:21&sn2=2013-2-4T12:52:21&sn2=2013-2-4T12:52:24&sn2=2013-2-4T12:57:35&sn3=2013-2-4T12:57:38&sn3=2013-2-4T12:57:39&sn2=2013-2-4T12:57:39&sn2=2013-2-4T12:57:40&sn3=2013-2-4T12:57:46&sn3=2013-2-4T13:21:30

I tried using the following

console.log(screens); //logs my sample data posted above.
        $.ajax({
            url : url,
            type: "POST",
            dataType : 'text',
            data : screens,
            success : function(data) {
                console.log("sucessfull sending:")
                console.log(data);
            },
            error : function() {
                console.log('failed');
            }

        });

But it always triggers failed.

Can I send it as a string? If not, how can I send multiple items with the same key?

Answer 1

    console.log(screens); //logs my sample data posted above.
    $.ajax({
        url : url,
        type: "POST",
        dataType : 'text',
        data : {screens:screens},
        success : function(data) {
            console.log("sucessfull sending:")
            console.log(data);
        },
        error : function() {
            console.log('failed');
        }

    });

See data : {screens:screens},, if you do something like that, on server you will be able to get it like: screensString = Request["screens"]. After that, screensString will contain a single string with all screens.

Answer 2

When you don't specify contentType in the ajax options, your request will default to 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8'. However, when your post data is just text, you should make the server aware of that fact by specifying a contentType 'text'. As opposed to the contentType, the dataType specifies the type of response data that you expect back from the server.