Question

I’ve been searching for a simple, clean and flexible way to return errors to the browser after a POST or GET request.

Example AJAX request with jQuery:

$.ajax({ 
  data : {
    method  : 'example',
    input : 1
  },
  success : function(i){
    if(i != 'succes'){
      alert(i);
    }
 }
}); 

Server side response:

switch($_POST['method']){
  case 'example':
    if($_POST['input'] == 1) {
      echo 'succes';
    } else {
      echo 'error';
      // or
      die('error');
    }
  break;
}

This just doesn’t feel solid enough. Does anyone know a good way to capture an error combined with a message?

Answer 1

@Esailija is correct; return HTTP status codes so that jQuery’s ajax error handler can receive the error.