How to call a PHP function in JavaScript?

Answer 1

I was working on a project this week and came up with an easy way to call a php script from an onclick(). It goes like this.

I define an onclick() call in this case on a div called "sidebarItem"…

Click me for new content

Then I made a simple little JS function that loads an external file into the target container…

function populate($container, $page, $item){
$($container).load('cyclorama/includes/populate.php?$page='+$page+'&$item='+$item);}

Then I write a small php file that gets the $page and $item, queries the database and returns the new content.

The php script echoes the new content and it's loaded into the container. I think there are a lot of places this could serve. I'd be interested in finding out if there are any obvious reasons NOT to do this. It doesn't use AJAX just javascript and php but it's fast and relatively easy.