Question

I feel like this is something that I should have learned by now, and I’m sure it’s something small I’m missing, but I could use clarification to make sure my approach is correct.

I’m using AJAX to post data to self which is a file that contains php and html. I can write the php fine, but after a successful ajax post, how do I only return the data that is processed via php and not the remaining html? Is it better to just post to a separate script?

Answer 1

If you have the PHP handling the POST request in the beginning of the file, you can just do something like this:

<?php
    if (isset($_POST['somevar'])) {
        /* do something */
        exit(0);
    }
?>

exit() will stop the loading of the page at that line.

I, for one, think it’s better to be utilizing a separate script to deal with dynamic AJAX requests.