Question

When I try to get the response from a php file using Jquery ajax, I just get (an empty string) (Accdg. to Firebug console using console.log(data))

Here’s the Html code:

<form action="test.php" method="POST" id="ajax">
    <input type="text" name="field" />
    <input type="submit" value="submit" name="submit" />
</form>

Here’s the Jquery code:

$('#ajax').submit(function(e) {
    e.preventDefault();

    $.ajax({
       type: 'POST',
       data: $(this).serialize(),
       url: 'test.php',
       cache: false,
       success: function(data) {
           alert(data); 
       }
    });

    return false;
});

And the PHP code:

if ($_POST['submit'] == "submit") 
{
    echo 'Got your request';
} 

Just basic. What frustrates me is that it’s straightforward, I’ve done some research and still it doesn’t work. I also want it to be as simple as possible.

Please enlighten me.

Answer 1

Don’t check to see if you’re in a POST situation by checking for fieldnames. That’s incorrect – you might change your client-side form names and forget to update the PHP check.

The 100% reliable method is to use:

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST') {
    echo "Got your request";
}

However, since you just want to see if the server got pinged at all by your ajax call, why not do:

<?php

echo "Got your ", $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'], " request";

Which’d just return Got your POST request or Got your GET request, etc…

As well, check your server log (or use HTTPFOX/Firebug Net tab, etc…) to see if that ajax request is actually going out and being received by the server.