Question

I have a view_mine_and_others.php file that outputs this html

<div class="rec" id="1">
 <div class="val">343</div>
 <a class="change">Change</a>
</div>
<div class="rec" id="2">
 <div class="val">12001</div>
 <a class="change">Change</a>
</div>
<div class="rec" id="3">
 <div class="val">4233</div>
 <a class="change">Change</a>
</div>

I have the links (<a class="change">) bound to a js function function change() that reads the id and val of the record involved, with the attention to send this data off to an update.php script.

$("a.change").click(change);

function change(){
   var id = $(this).parent().attr('id'); 
   var val = $(this).siblings('.val').html();

   /* this I'm guessing is where I call the ajax code */

   /* I then have some code here to udpate the interface if successful *
}

update.php will check if the user is authorized to make this change and will make the change if so. It will also set $success = 0 or 1 depending as a success indicator. This $success isn’t returned in any way since it’s not a function, it’s just an internal variable that I have in the update script that could be used if needed.

• How do I make the ajax call such that I get feedback whether the update was allowed ($success=1 in update.php) or not (success = 0 in update.php). I’ll use that feedback to update the interface differently.

Extra info:

• Note that I opted not to use a form 🙂 just doing with the <a>

• The update.php script is expecting a $_POST['id'] and $_POST[val] (I’m not going to post the code for update.php here since it’s not the point, I’m sure you can imagine what it looks like and what it does)

Answer 1

Here’s the quick rundown since the above solutions seemed to miss a few steps and this code handles sanitizing your $_POST data and is perhaps slightly easier to follow:

JAVASCRIPT:

function change() {
   var id = $(this).parent().attr('id'); 
   var val = $(this).siblings('.val').html();

   $.post('/view_mine_and_others.php', { id: id, val: val }, function(data) {
      if (data == '1') {
         alert('success');
      } else {
         alert('error');
      }
   });
   // you MUST return false or the A button will still fire the click event
   return false;
}

PHP:

// assumes both id and val are integer values (sanitizes data)
$id   = (isset($_POST["id"])) ? (int) $_POST['id'] : null;
$val  = (isset($_POST['val'])) ? (int) $_POST['val'] : null;

// do your database work here
// and assume that you create a variable
// called $success which is either true or false
// depending on if the update was successful

// echo the response to be picked up by the AJAX request
echo ($success) ? 1 : 0;
die;