How to get JSON from URL in JavaScript?

You can use jQuery .getJSON() function:

$.getJSON('http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20%2a%20from%20yahoo.finance.quotes%20WHERE%20symbol%3D%27WRC%27&format=json&diagnostics=true&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys&callback', function(data) {
    // JSON result in `data` variable
});

If you don't want to use jQuery you should look at this answer for pure JS solution.

If you want to do it in plain javascript, you can define a function like this:

var getJSON = function(url, callback) {
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.open('GET', url, true);
    xhr.responseType = 'json';
    xhr.onload = function() {
      var status = xhr.status;
      if (status === 200) {
        callback(null, xhr.response);
      } else {
        callback(status, xhr.response);
      }
    };
    xhr.send();
};

And use it like this:

getJSON('http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20%2a%20from%20yahoo.finance.quotes%20WHERE%20symbol%3D%27WRC%27&format=json&diagnostics=true&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys&callback',
function(err, data) {
  if (err !== null) {
    alert('Something went wrong: ' + err);
  } else {
    alert('Your query count: ' + data.query.count);
  }
});

Note that data is an object, so you can access its attributes without having to parse it.