Question

I just started learning PHP and was wondering if there is a way to trigger a portion (a function really) of a php script when a user clicks on a link/button without redirecting the user to a new php script page?.

Basically, is there a way to invoke php functions through client side user actions like you have in javascript?.

Answer 1

Here’s how you can do it with JQuery using $.ajax() ^[Docs]

$('#my-button').click(function(){
    $.ajax({
        url:      'my_php_page.php?route=my_preferred_function',
        data:     'foo=bar',
        type:     'post',
        dataType: 'json',
        success:  function(data){
            alert('Response = ' + data);
        }
    });
});

Most MVC frameworks – one example being CodeIgniter allow you to execute specific functions in the controller via the URL: http://domain.com/mycontroller/myfunc. If your function takes two arguments, for example:

public function foobar($foo,$bar){
    // do something
}

You can access it via http://domain.com/mycontroller/foobar/abc/123 making your ajax calls super easy.