jquery - Get response from PHP file using AJAX

Question

So here's my issue, I am using AJAX (jQuery) to post a form to process.php but the page actually needs to echo out a response such as apple or plum. I'm not sure how to take the response from process.php and have it stored as a variable...

Here's the code I have so far:

<script type="text/javascript">
        function returnwasset(){
            alert('return sent');
            $.ajax({
                type: "POST",
                url: "process.php",
                data: somedata;
                success function(){
                    //echo what the server sent back...
                }
            });
        }
    </script>

Also will I need to echo the response in process.php in json? or will plain text be fine?

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, this is my first time doing something as such in Ajax.

PS: How do I name the POST request in the above code?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14918462/get-response-from-php-file-using-ajax

Answer 1

<?php echo 'apple'; ?> is pretty much literally all you need on the server.

as for the JS side, the output of the server-side script is passed as a parameter to the success handler function, so you'd have

success: function(data) {
   alert(data); // apple
}