Possible Javascript scope issue

Your $.get is asynchronous. That means it will finish sometime AFTER the rest of the code, thus you won't see it's effect on the body variable inside that function. Instead, it's success callback function will be called long after this function has already finished.

To chain multiple asynchronous ajax calls like you have here, you can't just use normal sequential programming because asynchronous ajax calls aren't sequential. The network request is sent, then your javascript continues executing and SOMETIME LATER when the response arrives, the success handler is called and is executed.

To run sequential ajax calls like you have, you have to nest the work inside the success handler so that the ONLY code that uses the response is actually in the success handler. In pseudo-code, it looks like this:

$.get(..., function(data) {
    // operate on the results only in here

    // a second ajax function that uses the data from the first 
    // or adds onto the data from the first
    $.get(..., function(data) {
        // now finally, you have all the data 
        // so you can continue on with your logic here

    });
    // DO NOT PUT ANYTHING HERE that uses the responses from the ajax calls 
    // because that data will not yet be available here
});

You cannot do what you're doing which is like this:

var myVariable;

$.get(..., function(data) {
    // add something to myVariable
});
$.get(..., function(data) {
    // add something to myVariable
});
$.get(..., function(data) {
    // add something to myVariable
});
// do something with myVariable

None of those ajax calls will have completed before the end of your function. You have to follow a design pattern like in my first example.

For more advanced tools, one can always use jQuery deferreds which are just a different way of defining code to run after an ajax call is done. It looks a little more like sequential programming even though it's really just scheduling code to run the same way my first code example does.