$_POST doesn't reflect data being sent with jQuery post ajax

Question

I'm using ajax/json to send values to a php function that would then display the data on the page. I'm sending two values $hours and $memberID , except I seem to only be able to retrieve $hours and not $memberID . I ran the page through Firebug, on the javascript page the values for both variables are being read right before they're sent. In the PHP form, I ran multiple conditions/echo statements to print out both values except only $hours is being displayed. Any ideas?

PHP:

$result = array();
        if(!empty($_POST['hours'])) {
            $result['type'] = "success";
            $result['memberID'] = (int)$_POST['memID'];
            $result['hours'] = (int)$_POST['hours'];
            $result = json_encode($result);
            echo $result;
         }

Javascript:

 //numberofMembers is the total number of entries in the database
function subtractHours(numberofMembers) {
document.body.style.cursor = "wait";
var hours = document.getElementById("hours");
var i = 1;
var studentID;
while(i < numberofMembers) {        
    studentID = document.getElementById("member"+i);    
    alert(studentID.value);
    if(studentID && studentID.checked) {            
        $.ajax({
            type : 'post',
            datatype: 'json',
            url : 'hours_subtract.php',
            data : {hours : hours.value, memID : studentID.value},
            success: function(response) {
                if(response == 'success') {
                    alert('Hours subtracted!');
                } else {
                    alert('Error!');
                }
            }
        }); 
        //$.post( "subtract.php", {person: personId, personSalary: personSalary} );
    }
    i++;
}   
}

PHP(HTML form):

echo "<input type='checkbox' name='member{$attNumber}' id='member{$attNumber}' value=$studentID/>$attendees<br />";

Edit: If I run a var_dump($_POST['memberID']); , it prints out NULL . If I run a var_dump($_POST) , it prints out array(2) { ["hours"]=> string(1) "1" ["member3"]=> string(8) "5101813/" } .

Edit: I added in the PHP code that uses member3 . Edit 2: That's the entire Javascript function. The PHP code is all that I have for processing the data.

Answer 1

When using jQuery Ajax, if one of the data parameters being sent is null or undefined, it will be discarded, and not sent to the server. Since you aren't getting this property in your PHP (serverside), it's likely that it's not being set properly on the initiali client-side page.

memberID.value // check this value

Can you check that memberID.value is returning the expected value?

Answer 2

I had a similar issue on my site. It turns out my ajax request was not sending the data via the $_POST stream as I expected it would. It was actually sending it through the request body.

To access it I had to do the following:

json_decode(file_get_contents(“php://input”));

This pulled the information from the request body and decoded the json data (which is the format I sent the data to the server) into something usable by PHP. Not sure but you may be experiencing a similar issue.

Answer 3

The problem is that your example isn't really showing us the code you're using.

The following duplicates your AJAX request which is the essence of this issue:

$.post(
    'hours_subtract.php',
    {
        hours : "test-val-1",
        memberID : "test-val-2"
    },
    function(resp) {
        // Handle the response
    }
);

There are only two values being sent to the server - hours and memberID

However, you state that var_dump($_POST) shows:

{ ["hours"]=> string(1) "1" ["member3"]=> string(8) "5101813/" }

But in your ajax request, there's no such member3 , and memberID isn't present in $_POST. As other have mentioned, maybe the value for memberID is null and not being sent - but that doesn't explain where member3 comes from.

I'd suggest figuring out why you have member3 in there, where it's coming from, and doing debug on the memberID value on the javascript side to find out if it's null.