If your error event handler takes the three arguments (xmlhttprequest, textstatus, and message) when a timeout happens, the status arg will be 'timeout'.
Per the jQuery documentation:
Possible values for the second argument (besides null) are "timeout", "error", "notmodified" and "parsererror".
You can handle your error accordingly then.
I created this fiddle that demonstrates this.
$.ajax({
url: "/ajax_json_echo/",
type: "GET",
dataType: "json",
timeout: 1000,
success: function(response) { alert(response); },
error: function(xmlhttprequest, textstatus, message) {
if(textstatus==="timeout") {
alert("got timeout");
} else {
alert(textstatus);
}
}
});?
With jsFiddle, you can test ajax calls -- it will wait 2 seconds before responding. I put the timeout setting at 1 second, so it should error out and pass back a textstatus of 'timeout' to the error handler.
Hope this helps!