Trouble making multiple ajax requests

Trouble making multiple ajax requests

Still a javascript and Jquery noob. I'm trying to make multiple ajax requests and I'm going off an example I found that creates two functions returning the ajax requests and then uses .when() method to do some stuff. Here's my code so far, which does nothing as of now.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.6.4.min.js"></script>
<script >
$(document).ready(function($) {
    // - 1st link in chain - var url = 'https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/items?parentId=504108e5e4b07a90c5ec62d4&max=60&offset=0&format=jsonp';
    // - 2nd link in chain - var url = 'https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/itemLink/504216b6e4b04b508bfd333b?format=jsonp&max=10';
    // - 3rd (and last) link in chain - var url = 'https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/4f4e4b19e4b07f02db6a7f04?format=jsonp';

    // parentId url
    function parentId() {

    //var url = 'https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/items?parentId=504108e5e4b07a90c5ec62d4&max=3&offset=0&format=jsonp';

        return $.ajax({
            type: 'GET',
            url: 'https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/items?parentId=504108e5e4b07a90c5ec62d4&max=3&offset=0&format=jsonp',
            jsonpCallback: 'getSBJSON',
            contentType: "application/json",
            dataType: 'jsonp',
            success: function(json) {},
            error: function(e) {
                console.log(e.message);
            }
        });
    }

    // itemLink url
    function itemLink() {

        //var url = 'https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/itemLink/504216b6e4b04b508bfd333b?format=jsonp&max=10';

        return $.ajax({
            type: 'GET',
            url: 'https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/itemLink/504216b6e4b04b508bfd333b?format=jsonp&max=10',
            jsonpCallback: 'getSBJSON',
            contentType: "application/json",
            dataType: 'jsonp',
            success: function(json) {},
            error: function(e) {
                console.log(e.message);
            }
        });
    }

    // Multiple Ajax Requests
    $.when( parentId(), itemLink()).done(function(parentId_data, itemLink_data) {
        console.log("works!");

    });

});

I put the document.write("Works!") just to test and see if those two links come back successful, that it will print Works! to the screen. Since it doesn't I figured somethings wrong but I have no idea.

Just a little info on what I'm really trying to accomplish. I want to take two, three or more links and use them to make ajax requests, then take that information and place onto a webpage. I'm under the impression that making multiple requests using Jquery will allow me to do this without taking forever to return some results and the reason has something to do with deferred objects???

Any help with the code or my LACK of understanding with multiple ajax calls or deferred objects is greatly appreciated.

Thanks