Using JavaScript to interact with tables and fields

I should have included the URL of the table in my reply:

https://login.quickbase.com/db/6ewwzuuj?a=td

You should visit this URL, press F12 and paste my code into the console.

As to your questions:

1. I understand we need to create an anonymous function for the .each() call so that we can loop through every record and retrieve its attributes

You don't normally think in terms of looping each record - rather you perform functional methods such as map(), filter(), reduce(), each() on the selection.

2. I understand what get() conceptually should do. The dbidTable needs to be referenced on every iteration of the each() loop

dbidTable is a relative URL which is just the dbid for the table you are accessing. The $.get() returns an XML document. The following statement selects each <record> in the XML response and processes it:

$("record", xml).each(function() {...}

3. The .then() is a promise to be fulfilled if the get() call is successful. However, what value is stored into 'xml' from get() if it's successful. And WHY do we need to pass 'xml' to our selection along with record? Why are double quotes allowed, when the literature I have read for this requires single quotes?

XML holds the response body of the GET request. If you expand the #document in the console you can see the XML response:



The double quotes are just placed around JavaScript strings. I think your reference to single quotes in the documentation is in forming query clauses which QuickBase documents like this:

{'3'.EX.'123'}

Why QuickBase does this I don't know because you don't need the single quotes.

4. Can you briefly explain the necessity for the 'this' keyword in the selection. I have used it plenty, but maybe there are subtleties I don't quite understand in this statement.

In my code this refers to the individual record being processed by the function inside the each method:

    $("record", xml).each(function() {
      var rid = $("record_id_", this).text();
      var name = $("function_name", this).text();
      var type = $("result_type", this).text();
      console.log(rid, name, type);
    });