Calling a PHP function from an HTML form in the same file

Question

I\'m trying to execute a PHP function in the same page after the user enters a text and presses a submit button.

The first I think of is using forms. When the user s

Answer 1

You can submit the form without refreshing the page, but to my knowledge it is impossible without using a JavaScript/Ajax call to a PHP script on your server. The following example uses the jQuery JavaScript library.

HTML

...

JavaScript

$(function() {
    $("#theForm").submit(function() {
        var data = "a=5&b=6&c=7";
        $.ajax({
            url: "path/to/php/file.php",
            data: data,
            success: function(html) {
                .. anything you want to do upon success here ..
                alert(html); // alert the output from the PHP Script
            }
        });
        return false;
    });
});

Upon submission, the anonymous Javascript function will be called, which simply sends a request to your PHP file (which will need to be in a separate file, btw). The data above needs to be a URL-encoded query string that you want to send to the PHP file (basically all of the current values of the form fields). These will appear to your server-side PHP script in the $_GET super global. An example is below.

var data = "a=5&b=6&c=7";

If that is your data string, then the PHP script will see this as:

echo($_GET['a']); // 5
echo($_GET['b']); // 6
echo($_GET['c']); // 7

You, however, will need to construct the data from the form fields as they exist for your form, such as:

var data = "user=" + $("#user").val();

(You will need to tag each form field with an 'id', the above id is 'user'.)

After the PHP script runs, the success function is called, and any and all output produced by the PHP script will be stored in the variable html.

...
success: function(html) {
    alert(html);
}
...