Return multiple values in jQuery AJAX call

I have a jquery post function that returns a response on success after the click of a div. However, I would like to return multiple variables on success.

You can only return one value - a blob of text (in most cases).

You can, however, structure that text, so you can easily extract different bits of data from it.

Do I have to use JSON

No, but it is the simplest option.

, and if so, is it possible to integrate it into the $.ajax function after success?

Umm. Yes. Did you read the manual for the jQuery ajax function? It explicitly mentions using JSON and getting an object as the argument to the success function.

You would have to return JSON (or some other data format supported by jQuery's ajax() function) from favorite.php.
edit: it doesn't have to be json, but for multiple return values, it is the easiest to parse. For instance, if you returned xml or html, you'd have to traverse nodes to return a value.

For instance, if you returned:
{"user": "Joe", "success" : "pass", "message" : "favorite added" }

in success, you would use:

function(response){
  var user = response.user;
  var success = response.success; // etc.
}

The important thing to remember is to specify the dataType in your ajax call as json. jQuery also supports the other dataTypes: xml, html, script, jsonp, text

I believe the default is html. And, having written php to return xml with properly formatted headers in the php script, I can tell you that sometimes you have to specify the dataType for jQuery to parse it correctly.

Let's say the returned json is something like this

{
  firstName: 'Ricardo',
  lastName: 'Jones',
  errors: 0
}

You can use the jQuery getJSON method as follows:

$.getJSON(
   'favorite.php',
   { 'action': 'favorite', 'username': username, 'topic_id': topic_id, 'token': token },
   function(data) {
     alert(data.firstName);
     alert(data.lastName);
     alert(errors);
   }
)

In the returning function you can get the many variables you want.

I have never programmed in PHP. In asp.net JSON is the default mode of data exchange in async webservice call , so as a developer I dont have to worry about underlying details of JSON. I guess even jQuery gets its data in JSON format. If in case you have multiple values , you can get them in the form of list or dictionary format.

To send some data to the page mentioned under 'url', you can do this using your 'data' section

data: { _token: CSRF_TOKEN, prot_string : request.term, organism : 'homo sapience'} And from the page mentioned under url, these values can be taken as :
$request->get('prot_string'); $request->get('organism');