retrieving value of CKEditor instance with javascript (jquery)

I have a page with a form to create a group email campaign, and the client would now like the option to preview the email before it is sent.
Using jquery, I am passing the values of my form fields into an ajax request and setting a couple of session variables, which I then use in my email preview.
The subject field in the form is just a text field and I am setting the subject session variable like so...

$.ajax({
type: 'POST',
url: 'setmailsession.php',
data: { subject: $('#emailsubject').val() }
})
which seems straightforward, as the subject text field has an id of ‘emailsubject’
However, I cannot retrieve the content of the text message from ckeditor.
The text editor doesn’t seem to have an id, but is named editorField, and there is only one instance of it, so I tried (amongst other things) document.getElementsByName('editorField').item(0).value, but no value is returned.
Grateful if anyone can tell me, how do I retrieve the value of the text editor field with js ?

use getData()

if the name of the ckeditor field is "editorField" the code would be:

CKEDITOR.instances.editorField.getData();

Thanks Jason.

I needed to change the syntax a little

CKEDITOR.instances['editorField'].getData(),, but I wouldn't have got there without your help.

Cheers

Got this working fine on testing server, but on live site, the CKEDITOR.instance isn’t updated, so the session value always seems to be that the text set previously.
On clicking the preview button, a block of js is fired, which does 2 things..

1. it calls an ajax function to set session variables based on the form fields
2. it opens a popup window, which displays the session values in an email ‘preview’
Here is the code

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function () {
	$('#preview').click(function(e){
		
		$.ajax({
			type: 'POST',
			url: '/admin/mail/plugins/setmailsession.php',//use full path !
			data: { 
			subject: $('#emailsubject').val(),
			eventid: '', //set eventid session value to empty string
			message: CKEDITOR.instances['Message'].getData(),
			 }
			 
		})
		//alert(CKEDITOR.instances['Message'].getData());
		
   $.window({
   title: document.getElementById('emailsubject').value,
   url: "/admin/mail/email_campaign_template.php?CampaignType=3",//General Email
   width: 650,           // window width
   height: 650,          // window height
   draggable: false,
   resizable: false,
   maximizable: false,
   minimizable: false,
   showModal: true
});

		e.preventDefault();
    });
});
</script>

The ‘subject’ session value is updated ok, but the message shows the ‘previous’ content of the editor

The issue is the A in AJAX stands for asynchronous... this means that it won't wait for the sessions to be updated before loading the page... so it is a timing and order of operations issue.

You need to pass another argument to the ajax function call: async: false;

If you turn off asynchronous then it will wait for the session variables to be updated before opening the window.

Thanks Ray, that seems to have resolved the issue.

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