contentType
is the HTTP header sent to the server, specifying a particular format.
Example: I’m sending JSON or XMLdataType
is you telling jQuery what kind of response to expect.
Expecting JSON, or XML, or HTML, etc. The default is for jQuery to try and figure it out.
The $.ajax()
documentation has full descriptions of these as well.
In your particular case, the first is asking for the response to be in UTF-8
, the second doesn’t care. Also the first is treating the response as a JavaScript object, the second is going to treat it as a string.
So the first would be:
success: function(data) {
// get data, e.g. data.title;
}
The second:
success: function(data) {
alert("Here's lots of data, just a string: " + data);
}