jQuery update a Div with a PHP script

Question

I have absolutely no idea how to do this, so I'm just gonna go ahead and ask.

What I want to do is update the contents of a div with a PHP script I have in an external file, called send.php.

So I have a div like this:

<div class="classname">

</div>

And I want to post data to this send.php file, and then update that div with whatever the outcome of the PHP script is. Can this be done?

Solution

For simple ajax calls, I normally prefer using $.load as its grammar is extremely concise. Passing parameters as an object (key/value pairs) will cause it to use a POST request:

<a href="no-script.php" class="something">Click!</a>

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('a.something').click(function(e) {
        //prevent the href from being followed
        e.preventDefault();

        //inject div.classname with the output of send.php
        $('div.classname').load('send.php', {param1: 'foo', param2: 'blah'});
    });
});

If you don't need it to be a POST, you can just add your parameters as a query string:

$('div.classname').load('send.php?param1=' + param1 + '&param2=' + param2);