Question

Simply, users can login on my website.

$('#login').click(function() {
    var user = $('#username').val();
    var pass = $('#password').val();
    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: "authorize.php",
        data: { username: user, password: pass },
        success: function(data) {
            $('#data').html(data);
        }
    });
});

The ajax success: will fire regardless of the login working or not, right? It does no server-side processing. How do I communicate to the Jquery script from authorize.php that the users login has failed?

Answer 1

in your php do this:

// your authentication magic here
if($user->authenticated) {
    $return = array('status' => 'loggedIn');
} else {
    $return = array('status' => 'failed');
}
echo json_encode($return);

Then in your ajax call add the setting: dataType: 'json':

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "authorize.php",
    data: { username: user, password: pass },
    dataType: 'json', // NOTE this line
    success: function(data) {
        alert(data.status); // says 'loggedIn' or 'failed'
    }
});