thanks for the quick response. Is there some code you could point me at? Thanks, Dan

Use drupal_to_js on the server and parseJson on the client to transfer serialized data in the server->client direction. I also like to send serialized JS to the server, but this requires external JSON libraries (both client and server side).

-Robert

Dan Robinson wrote:

...

I am trying to get some AJAX stuff to work -

javascript function -

function setMapContacts(uri, groupname) { HTTPGet(uri+"/"+groupname, addContactsToMap, "") ; }

this is the PHP function that gets called as a result of the above HTTPGet -

function getContacts($GroupName) { $contacts = getContactsInGroup($GroupName); print drupal_to_js($contacts); exit(); }

Here is the callback .js function I don't think I understand the correct way to format the callback - "contacts" has no value -

function addContactsToMap(httpresponse, xmlhttp, contacts) { if (xmlhttp.status != 200) { return alert('An HTTP error '+ xmlhttp.status +' occured.\n'+ httpresponse.uri); } ; map.clearOverlays(); alert(httpresponse); }

and I get a dump in httpresponse - the dump has the data i want in it - but I would much rather be dealing with a javascript array :). How do I get a javascript array? Is there a cast I have to do? Thanks,

Dan

Steven, I figured it out last night after getting on #drupal for a moment. Also Robert replied off-line. It is very straight forward. All of this is new for me so everything is fairly complicated. You are right however, it is very easy. I had read through the doco (the tutorials) but still didn't quite "get it" - also they weren't updated with the newer parseJson call. Also there is quite a bit of abstraction going on in the tutorials and in the way that the functions are being declared in your examples from autocomplete.js (which I had looked at previously) - this made it relatively difficult for me to figure out what was what. I would be happy to take a pass at the doco which I think could be made simpler. Thanks a bunch, Dan

...

thanks for the quick response. Is there some code you could point me at?

The Ajax autocompleter uses JSON to pass in the list of suggestions. It's quite simple.

For PHP to JS, you build a PHP variable/array/object and print it through drupal_to_js. On the JS side, you take the XMLHttpRequest data and pass it through parseJson().

For JS to PHP, we don't use JSON. JS and PHP already have a mechanism for passing data in: HTTP GET and POST. Simply use HTTPPost, and pass in a JS object. It will be parsed by PHP into a PHP object on the server-side. Or, you can pass in simpler requests through HTTP GET.

Either way, there is a transparent mechanism to pass data between PHP and JS without loss. It's not as hard as you might think, it all happens transparently.

Steven Wittens

Code from user.module: ------------------------------------

/** * Retrieve a pipe delimited string of autocomplete suggestions for existing users */ function user_autocomplete($string) { $matches = array(); $result = db_query_range("SELECT name FROM {users} WHERE LOWER(name) LIKE LOWER('%s%%')", $string, 0, 10); while ($user = db_fetch_object($result)) { $matches[$user->name] = check_plain($user->name); } print drupal_to_js($matches); exit(); }

Code from autocomplete.js: ----------------------------------------

/** * Performs a cached and delayed search */ ACDB.prototype.search = function(searchString) { .... this.timer = setTimeout(function() { addClass(db.owner.input, 'throbbing'); db.transport = HTTPGet(db.uri +'/'+ encodeURIComponent(searchString), db.receive, db); }, this.delay); }

/** * HTTP callback function. Passes suggestions to the autocomplete object */ ACDB.prototype.receive = function(string, xmlhttp, acdb) { ... // Parse back result var matches = parseJson(string); if (typeof matches['status'] == 'undefined' || matches['status'] != 0) { acdb.cache[acdb.searchString] = matches; acdb.owner.found(matches); } }