Why is the call wrapped in an if statement? See “Caching data” below.

The first parameter (“index” in this example) is the URI segment (sometimes also referred to as the “slug”) that identifies the node to be retrieved. This is the portion of the URL which can be edited by the user on the Edit screen for a page or media file.

The second parameter is a boolean which tells scalarapi whether or not it should ignore cached data for the node. A value of “true” forces the node to be reloaded from the server, while “false,” used here, allows the cached data to be used.

The construction of the call to loadNode shown in the example accounts for cases in which cached data for the node is available. The loadNode method returns true if cached data is available for the node, and so by wrapping the call in an if statement we ensure that the success handler will be called whether the node data is cached or not.

The third parameter is a function to be called when the node is successfully loaded, and the fourth is a function to be called when the node fails to load.

The loadNode method can retrieve related nodes; the fifth parameter indicates how many degrees of separation will be used when searching for these. Higher numbers will increase the amount of time needed to retrieve the data; use with caution.