Question

If I’m making an ‘ajaxified’ user interface with many ajax calls for creating, renaming, deleting various things on my page – what is the best way to handle all those “code behind” ajax pages? At first I had a different .php file for each call (i.e. Candy_Rename.php, Candy_Delete.php). But I found my code base becoming overwhelming with the number of files created.

Now I’m sending a “command” parameter with my request, and then I manage all things related to Candy in one file “ajax_Candy.php”. So for example my jQuery request will be:

$.get('ajax_Candy.asp', { command: 'insert', candyName: 'Jolly Ranchers' }, function (response) {
    alert(response.candyId);
}

Is this a good way to go about it?

Edit: All of the answers were great and said pretty much the same thing. I had to pick one and I thought mentioning security is important for anyone else who travels down this path – so there you go. I am using the switch statement as one user mentioned.

Answer 1

Assuming that you are handling security issues on the server side, I don’t see a problem with your method. The PHP file has to make sure that the requester has privilege to execute the command. You wouldn’t want an user deleting all of your records…