Question

In my javascript file I have the following:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">

$.ajax({

    type: 'post',
    url: 'script.php',
    data: '',
    success: function(output) {
        alert(output[0])
    }

});

</script>

In my PHP file I have the following:

<?php

echo 'dog';
echo 'cat';

?>

Now I know I’m not passing any data through the ajax function, I just wrote the above to test one thing, that is:

When I alert output[0] I get the letter “d”. Instead I want to be able to get “dog” and when I alert output[1] I want to be able to get “cat”. How to achieve this?

Answer 1

By default, given the response your call is receiving, jQuery is simply handing you the output as a string, in which case you’d have to do whatever string splitting/parsing as appropriate.

See http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax/ and specifically the dataType property for more information. Depending on what you eventually intend to return from that service (JSON, XML, etc.), you’ll want to set that property accordingly in the object you pass to the $.ajax call.