Question

OK, not really sure if this is possible but thought I’d ask anyway 🙂

I have a HTML page which contains some information and a link.
The link calls a JavaScript confirm dialog box.
If the user selects OK then I want to call a function in a PHP file, but in the background, i.e I don’t want to change page, reload or anything.

Is this possible?

Thanks

T

Answer 1

Use AJAX. The following uses jQuery:

if(confirm('Are you sure?')) {
    $.ajax({
        url: '/path/to/file.php',
        data: 'url=encoded&query=string', // Can also be an object
        success: function(output) {
            // This function is called after the PHP file completes.
            // The variable passed in is a string containing all output of
            // your PHP script (i.e. echo / print )
        }
    });
}

For more information, check out jQuery’s documentation for AJAX. If you cannot use jQuery, there are many tutorials on using native JavaScript to make AJAX Requests.

If you are returning a large amount of data back to your success function from PHP, it would be worthwhile for you to return the data from PHP as a JSON encoded array, which can be safely parsed client-side into a JavaScript object.