jQuery ajax request with json response, how to?

Question

I am sending an ajax request with two post values, the first is "action" which defines what actions my php script has to parse, the other is "id" which is the id of the user it has to parse the script for.

The server returns 6 values inside an array() and is then encoded to JSON with the PHP function: json_encode();

Some of my responses are HTML, but when I encode it to JSON, it escapes "/" so it becomes "\/"
How do I disable that?

Also when I don't know how to display this in jQuery when I get the server response, I just thought that putting it all into a div would just display the numbers and HTML codes I had requested, but it displays the array as it is encoded in PHP.

PHP

$response = array(); $response[] = "<a href=''>link</a>"; $response[] = 1; echo json_encode($response); 

jQuery:

$.ajax({     type: "POST",     dataType: "json",     url: "main.php",     data: "action=loadall&id=" + id,     complete: function(data) {         $('#main').html(data.responseText);     } }); 

How do I make this into working JSON?

Answer 1

You need to call the

$.parseJSON(); 

For example:

... success: function(data){        var json = $.parseJSON(data); // create an object with the key of the array        alert(json.html); // where html is the key of array that you want, $response['html'] = "<a>something..</a>";     },     error: function(data){        var json = $.parseJSON(data);        alert(json.error);     } ... 

see this in http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.parseJSON/

if you still have the problem of slashes: search for security.magicquotes.disabling.php or: function.stripslashes.php

Note:

This answer here is for those who try to use $.ajax with the dataType property set to json and even that got the wrong response type. Defining the header('Content-type: application/json'); in the server may correct the problem, but if you are returning text/html or any other type, the $.ajax method should convert it to json. I make a test with older versions of jQuery and only after version 1.4.4 the $.ajax force to convert any content-type to the dataType passed. So if you have this problem, try to update your jQuery version.

Answer 2

Firstly, it will help if you set the headers of your PHP to serve JSON:

header('Content-type: application/json'); 

Secondly, it will help to adjust your ajax call:

$.ajax({     url: "main.php",     type: "POST",     dataType: "json",     data: {"action": "loadall", "id": id},     success: function(data){         console.log(data);     },     error: function(error){          console.log("Error:");          console.log(error);     } }); 

If successful, the response you receieve should be picked up as true JSON and an object should be logged to console.

NOTE: If you want to pick up pure html, you might want to consider using another method to JSON, but I personally recommend using JSON and rendering it into html using templates (such as Handlebars js).