How Do I Call PHP from JS/JQuery? AJAX?

AJAX calls a page and gets results in return.  Then what you do with them is up to you.  Here is an old demo page I wrote showing how to do that.  The links on the left pass a parameter to the PHP page to tell what text is requested.
http://www.dibsplace.com/webdev/ndxv1.php

Hi Dave,

What would the returnfunc.php look like?

I mean, once you have the $results array, how do you pass it back to JS?

AJAX makes a call to a script. How you structure that script is up to you - the script returns data and in the AJAX complete function you define what must be done with that data.

A simple example

<div id="content"></div>

<script>
$(function() {
   $('#content').load('yourscript.php');
});
</script>

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This approach uses jQuery's load function which executes the script and loads the returned content into the specified element.

If you want more control

<script>
$(function() {
    $.post('yourscript.php',data, function(resp) {
         // do something with return
    });
});
</script>

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For a JSON return

<script>
$(function() {
    $.post('yourscript.php',data, function(resp) {
         // do something with JSON return
    }, 'JSON');
});
</script>

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Remember the A in AJAX is for asynchronous which means you do your processing of returned data in the completion function.

Now if you want to trigger the above on an event you simply link it to an event handler
This demonstrates executing the AJAX call on a click event - it also shows the $.ajax() function of which the $.post and $.load are aliases.

$(function() {
  $('.someclass').click(function(e) {
     e.preventDefault();
     $.ajax({
         url: 'yourscript.php',
         data: {val: 1, someothervalue: 'text'},
         type:'POST',
         dataType:'JSON'
     }).then(function(resp) {
       // completion processing here
     });
  });
});

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