Select2 with AJAX and Initial Local Data - forms

Question

So I'm trying to get the select2 plugin to work with a Backbone.js / CakePHP app. The idea is that this select2 holds email addresses for contacting people as tasks become completed, but the form is editable. What I want to do is (1) load / display all the already saved email addresses for the task being edited, and (2) I want to still have the select2 perform AJAX searches to list recognized emails.
I keep having this issue where I can either show initial data, OR have the AJAX search feature.
My current code for my select2 box is a Backbone.View, and it looks like:
define([
'backbone',
'jquery',
'jquery.select2'
],
function(Backbone, $, select2) {
var notificationSelector = Backbone.View.extend({
notifications: undefined,
events: {
'change' : 'select2ContactsChanged'
},
initialize: function(attrs) {
this.collection.on('add remove reset', this.render(), this);
this.select2ContactsChanged();
},
render: function() {
var contacts = ["abc#def.com", "joe#banana.com"];
$('.notification-selector').attr('value', contacts);
if(this.select2Control == undefined)
{
// Do Search() + query here
this.select2Control = this.$el.select2({
width: '200px',
placeholder: '#email',
tags: [],
minimumInputLength: 3,
// initSelection: function(element, callback) {
// return $.ajax({
// type: "GET",
// url: "/notifications/fetch/",
// dataType: 'json',
// data: { id: (element.val()) },
// success: function(data) {
// }
// }).done(function(data) {
// console.log(data);
// });
// },
});
}
else
{
// Do Search() + query here
this.select2Control = this.$el.select2({
width: '200px',
placeholder: '#email',
tags: [],
minimumInputLength: 3,
ajax: {
url: '/notifications/search/',
dataType: 'json',
data: function(term, page) {
return {
SearchTerm: term
};
},
results: function(data, page) {
return {
results: data
};
}
}
});
}
},
select2ContactsChanged: function() {
var contacts = this.select2Control.val().split(',');
this.collection.reset(contacts);
}
});
return notificationSelector;
});
I read a response by the creator of Select2 to someone else (https://github.com/ivaynberg/select2/issues/392) in which he says to use a 'custom query' to achieve what seems to be what I want. I'm having trouble finding relevant examples or making enough sense of the docs to figure out what he means.
Can anyone spot what I'm doing wrong / missing?
Thanks for your time!
EDIT
I forgot to mention -- the DOM element this is attached to is <input type="hidden" multiple="true" class="notification-selector select2-result-selectable"></input>

Answer 1

Ok, I finally figured out the solution.
I was misunderstanding $.ajax() -- I did not really think about it actually being an asynchronous call. My code to check for the data being returned from the call was running before the AJAX actually finished, so I was always getting undefined.
I assigned a variable to the AJAX call, and set "async: false", and it worked perfectly.
fetchSetNotifications: function() {
var addresses = $.ajax({
method: 'GET',
dataType: 'json',
context: $('#notifications'),
url: '/Notifications/fetch/',
async: false,
alert(addresses);
}
The jqXHR object I get in 'addresses' then contains the response data I want in the "responseText" attribute.