I recently had a friend who specializes in ladder logic and not web programming, come to me requesting help with a project from her employer. While I use more traditional coding languages, I am far from an expert in jquery and php myself. The problem that we are having is that a php page with a jquery / html form inserted into a parent page via XMLHttpRequest, is not executing its "post" action from the parent page. The thing that makes this problem more difficult is that when page is run by itself outside of the parent page (loaded directly into the browser), it executes its "post" action fine. I have done many hours of searching and trial and error at this point but am stumped and now come to you for help. Below are the relevant bits of code. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated as nothing we've tried seems to work when it comes to executing the submit of the form when it is inserted via XMLHttpRequest.
Javascript Code From Parent Page inserting external form:
function showUser(str)
{
if (str=="")
{
document.getElementById("insertUserHere").innerHTML="";
return;
}
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
{// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
xmlhttp2=new XMLHttpRequest();
}
else
{// code for IE6, IE5
xmlhttp2=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
xmlhttp2.onreadystatechange=function()
{
if (xmlhttp2.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200)
{
document.getElementById("insertUserHere").innerHTML=xmlhttp2.responseText;
}
}
xmlhttp2.open("GET","ajax-userForm.php?q="+str,true);
xmlhttp2.send();
}
Code of External PHP page Inserted By xhmlhttprequest (ajax-userForm.php):
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.0.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-migrate-1.2.1.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
// JQUERY: Plugin "autoSubmit"
(function($) {
$.fn.autoSubmit = function(options) {
return $.each(this, function() {
// VARIABLES: Input-specific
var input = $(this);
var column = input.attr('name');
// VARIABLES: Form-specific
var form = input.parents('form');
var method = form.attr('method');
var action = form.attr('action');
// VARIABLES: Where to update in database
var where_val = form.find('#where').val();
var where_col = form.find('#where').attr('name');
// ONBLUR: Dynamic value send through Ajax
input.bind('blur', function(event) {
// Get latest value
var value = input.val();
if (input.attr('type') == "checkbox")
{
if (input.attr('checked') )
{
value = 1;
}
else
{
value = 0;
}
}
// AJAX: Send values
$.ajax({
url: action,
type: method,
data: {
val: value,
col: column,
w_col: where_col,
w_val: where_val
},
cache: false,
timeout: 10000,
success: function(data) {
// Alert if update failed
if (data) {
alert(data);
}
// Load output into a P
else {
$('#notice').text('Updated');
$('#notice').fadeOut().fadeIn();
}
}
});
// Prevent normal submission of form
return false;
})
});
}
})(jQuery);
// JQUERY: Run .autoSubmit() on all INPUT fields within form
$(function(){
$('#ajax-userForm INPUT').autoSubmit();
});
</script>
<!-- STYLE -->
<style type="text/css">
INPUT { margin-right: 1em }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<!-- CONTENT -->
<?php
$q = intval($_GET['q']);
/*
* DATABASE CONNECTION
*/
// DATABASE: Connection variables
$db_host = "localhost";
$db_name = "DBNAME";
$db_username = "root";
$db_password = "DBPWD";
// DATABASE: Try to connect
if (!$db_connect = mysql_connect($db_host, $db_username, $db_password))
die('Unable to connect to MySQL from ajax-form.');
if (!$db_select = mysql_select_db($db_name, $db_connect))
die('Unable to select database');
/*
* DATABASE QUERY
*/
// DATABASE: Get current row
//$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM user");
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM user where Project_ID = '".$q."' ");
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
?>
<form id="ajax-userForm" class="autosubmit" method="post" action="ajax-updateUser.php">
<fieldset>
<legend>Update user information</legend>
<label>First Name:</label>
<input name="FirstName" value="<?php echo $row['FirstName'] ?>" />
<label>Last Name:</label>
<input name="LastName" value="<?php echo $row['LastName'] ?>" />
<label>Hometown</label>
<input name="Hometown" value="<?php echo $row['Hometown'] ?>" />
<label>Married</label>
<input type = "checkbox" id = "chkMarried" name="Married" <?php echo $row['Married'] == 1 ? 'checked':'unchecked' ?>/>
<label>Employed</label>
<input type = "checkbox" id = "chkEmployed" name="Employed" <?php echo $row['Employed'] == 1 ? 'checked':'unchecked' ?> />
<input id="where" type="hidden" name="Project_ID" value="<?php echo $row['Project_ID'] ?>" />
</fieldset>
</form>
<p id="notice"></p>
</body>
</html>
Code for Page (ajax-updateUser.php) Called by "post" Action in Code Above (ajax-userForm.php):
/*
* DATABASE CONNECTION
*/
// DATABASE: Connection variables
$db_host = "localhost";
$db_name = "DBNAME";
$db_username = "root";
$db_password = "DBPWD";
// DATABASE: Try to connect
if (!$db_connect = mysql_connect($db_host, $db_username, $db_password))
die('Unable to connect to MySQL from ajax-update.');
if (!$db_select = mysql_select_db($db_name, $db_connect))
die('Unable to select database');
$message = "Connection Successful";
//echo "<script type='text/javascript'>alert('$message');</script>";
// DATABASE: Clean data before use
function clean($value)
{
return mysql_real_escape_string($value);
}
/*
* FORM PARSING
*/
// FORM: Variables were posted
if (count($_POST) > 0)
{
$message = count($_POST);
//echo "<script type='text/javascript'>alert('$message');</script>";
// Prepare form variables for database
foreach($_POST as $column => $value)
${$column} = clean($value);
// Perform MySQL UPDATE
$result = mysql_query("UPDATE user SET ".$col."='".$val."'
WHERE ".$w_col."='".$w_val."'")
or die ('Unable to update row.');
}
else
{
$message = "Nothing in Post";
echo "<script type='text/javascript'>alert('$message');</script>";
}
?>
Couple things:
Missing a close quote on your
DBPWD
Your check for status 200 uses:
xmlhttp // whereas the rest is xmlhttp2
My theory, without more context - You're not using a var keyword when declaring:
xmlhttp2=new XMLHttpRequest();
Which means that the request is attached to the window like this: window.xmlhttp2 = ... - could you be accidentally modifying the same identifiers elsewhere on the "parent" page? That would explain a shared state error and why it works only in isolation (you would have no other code implicitly modding window.xmlhttp2)
You could also be doing bad things with:
xmlhttp2.open("GET","ajax-userForm.php?q="+str,true);
Since I don't know what this path means.
Another one could be, do you have CORS headers set for the request from the external domain?
Cheers,
Andrew