Question

I have a simple ajax call inside a javascript function to a php file, which searches the DB and returns formatted html. Alls fine, but for some reason the returned html is being wrongly formatted.

Javascript:

$.ajax(
{ 
  url: "getItems.php?lastID=10",
  success: function(html)
  {
   if(html)
   {
    $("#main").prepend(html);      
   }
  }
 });

getItems.php

<?php
mysql_connect();
$lastID = $_GET['lastID'];  
$result = mysql_query("SELECT ...");

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) 
{
    echo '<span class="iteminfo"> ';    
    echo '<a class="username" href="http://x.com/'.$row['UserName'].'" target="_blank"/>'.$row['UserName'].'</a><br/>';
    echo '<a class="status" href="http://x.com/'.$row['UserName'].'/c/'" target="_blank" />'.$created_at.'</a></span>';
} 
?>

which should return (and it returns this correctly in Firebug)

<span class="iteminfo"> 
<a class="username" href="http://x.com/username" target="_blank"/>username</a><br/>
<a class="status" href="http://x.com/username/c/" target="_blank" />the date</a>
</span>

but instead its outputting:

<span class="iteminfo"> 
<a class="username" href="http://x.com/username" target="_blank"/></a>username<br/>
<a class="status" href="http://x.com/username/c/" target="_blank" /></a>the date
</span>

and I’ve no idea why.

Answer 1

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) 
{
    echo '<span class="iteminfo"> ';    
    echo '<a class="username" href="http://x.com/'.$row['UserName'].'" target="_blank">'.$row['UserName'].'</a><br/>';
    echo '<a class="status" href="http://x.com/'.$row['UserName'].'/c/'" target="_blank" >'.$created_at.'</a></span>';
} 

You have closed a tag wrong manner

<a> content </a>

but u have used

<a/></a>