Question

Goal: I want to get the text from the selected element and then create a PHP variable from it.

I know how to do this using jQuery but can’t wrap my mind around the idea of how to do it in PHP. Basically lets say I have a table with some data. When the user clicks on the data I would like to retrieve that text and then place it in a PHP variable. I could use .text(); from jQuery to create the variable but I could not pass that variable into PHP for further use.

I am very new to PHP (a front-end developer trying to learn back-end). So any explanation would be helpful also.

thanks!

***OK I now understand how to do it. Thanks for the input. I was not thinking. It makes perfect sense to create the variable using a _post and then returning the data via AJAX. Sorry for wasting your time. Thanks for replying.

Answer 1

In order to have PHP gather any client side data you would have to pass that data back to the server.

To assign data from client action to a PHP variable, you would first have to capture that data using a front end solution (like your jQuery one above) then pass that information to your server application for processing using AJAX or form submission.

Your PHP data handler could then parse that information out from the data submission and push that info into a variable.

Your front end would look something like

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: 'your_file.php',
    data: 'selected='+ captured_data,

});

and on your back end…

<?php
 ...some php code...

 $var_to_hold_selected_thing = $_POST["selected"];

 ...more php code
?>

Specifics of how to do more than that would depend on your application…