only pass a reference to the function

[leonardofed]

this is conceptually wrong since the SetTimeout is going to exectue the callback immediately and the function never gets passed in the callback queue.

solution, leverage closure and set the database[id] in a global variable.

var dataReceived; var data; function ajaxSimulate(id, callback) { var database = ['Aaron', 'Barbara', 'Chris']; data = database[id] setTimeout(callback, 0); } function storeData() { dataReceived = data;	console.log(dataReceived); } ajaxSimulate(1, storeData);