From what you say I assume you are using Evently, so I will quote from Evently primer:
The async function is the main star, which in this case makes an Ajax request (but it can do anything it wants). Another important thing to note is that the first argument to the async function is a callback which you use to tell Evently when you are done with your asynchronous action. [...] Whatever you pass to the callback function then becomes the first item passed to the data function.
In short: put your Ajax requests in async.js
.
As a side note: Evently is only one of the possible choices to write a couchapp and it is not clear if it is maintained. However it works and it is easy to rearrange the code to not use it.
EDIT: here is a sample async function (cut&paste from an old program):
function(cb, e) {
var app = $$(this).app
;
app.db.openDoc('SOMEDOCID', {
error: function(code, error, reason) {
alert("Error("+code+" "+error+"): "+reason);
}
, success: function(doc) {
app.view('SOMEVIEWNAME', {
include_docs: true
, error: function(code, error, reason) {
alert("Error("+code+" "+error+"): "+reason);
}
, success: function(resp) {
resp.doc = doc;
cb(resp);
}
});
}
});
}