Question

I’m trying to write a jQuery function to send a query string to a PHP script, but I can’t seem to get the text to get to the server in the correct format. I want to send this query string (with the appropriate URL encoding):

data={"name":"Chris"}

where ‘data’ is always a JSON string. Using jQuery’s .ajax function I tried setting my data variable to

data: { 'data': {"name":"chris"} },

but PHP ends up getting:

data[name]=chris

What’s the proper way to send the data back to the server so that the JSON string is properly reserved, without having to hand-craft the string?

Answer 1

First, you’ll need to use json2.js because jQuery does not include the capability to output JSON, only to parse it, and the method we will be using is not supported in IE 6/7. Convert your JavaScript object to JSON:

var encoded = JSON.stringify(data);

Then you need to include that JSON-formatted string as request data:

$.getJSON(url, {data: encoded}, function() { ... });

Edit: An older version of this post referred to the jquery-json plugin, but it’s obvious that that plug-in was written when jQuery 1.3.x was current.