javascript and php variables??

[shadiadiph]

I have been building an AJAX form my javascript knowledge is terrible but I am having a horribble time with javascript variables I assign the response var a = xmlHttp.responseText etc result which it gets fine why if i get a response from an xml node the javascript variable can compare if (var a =="error") { do this } else { do that} but with the .responseText reply will not recognise it and jump straight to the else I have tried returning a number as an error false as an error javascript just won't seem to read a returned variable properly I even tried .length==0 no joy??? Any tips? I'm beginning to think javascript and php were not supposed to coexist

[haku]

It appears you think that the alphabet and punctuation, and line breaks shouldn't co-exist either.

[shadiadiph]

Ha ha Haku so how would you validate the word error against something else in JavaScript if (var a =="error") doesn't work? By the way I read 4 different alphabets and speak 6 languages.

[shadiadiph]

I  don't get why if my php returns  return "error"; and then my javascript xmlHttp.responseText;

var length is 8 if i dont return anything it says it is 3 in length??

[haku]

By the way I read 4 different alphabets and speak 6 languages.

 

Isn't that impressive. Let me give you a cookie.

 

Anyways, my point was that if you don't write your problem in a manner that's easy to understand, you aren't likely to get help for it.

[shadiadiph]

Ok I have a form it is sending country,state,city,postal step by step with AJAX to a php page it either returns "error" if the next set of data is not found and does not display the div.

 

Problem is when i use

 

var result = xmlHttp.responseText;

if (result=="error')
{
//hide div
}
else
{
// display div
}

 

It doesn't recognise the word error but displays error as the else result

 

I have tried

 

var resultlen = result.length;

 

it keeps returning 8 if I don't return anything the length is 3 my question is why can't javascript not recognise the string with the value of error?  When I did this a different way using <xml> calling the node values it recognised the text string if (result=="error") etc it understood that but why not with xmlHttp.responseText; and how to deal with this?

 

 

[haku]

When you say it returns 'error', you mean it returns the string "error", or it returns an error?

[XeNoMoRpH1030]

If I had to guess, it appears 3 extra characters are being added on (white space). I'd check your PHP.

[shadiadiph]

I always trim everything and the word error is returned like this

 

return "error";

 

has 5 characters

 

even if i return nothing it says it's 3 in length it's weird.

[brianlange]

have you considered using jquery for your ajax code. It'll simplify things.

[shadiadiph]

I will look into it thanks

[haku]

Are any of your documents encoded in a non-utf8 encoding? Is you javascript using another encoding?

[shadiadiph]

I have all my docs using charset=ISO-8859-1" at the moment to read western state and city names my javascript at the moment is <script type="text/javascript" charset="ISO-8859-1" src="signup.js"></script>

[shadiadiph]

right now here is my code the alert returns nostates when i select a country that has no states and when it has it returns the correct value but everytime it only executes the else statement regardless??

 

document.getElementById("tempresult").value=xmlHttp.responseText;

var stateval;
var stateval = document.getElementById("tempresult").value;

alert('State Value' +stateval);

if (stateval == "nostates")
{
document.getElementById('staterow').style.visibility='hidden';
document.getElementById('cityrow').style.visibility='hidden';
document.getElementById('postalrow').style.visibility='hidden';
getcitybycc();  
}
else
{
document.getElementById('staterow').style.visibility='visible';
document.getElementById('stateinput').innerHTML=xmlHttp.responseText;
document.getElementById('cityrow').style.visibility='hidden';
document.getElementById('postalrow').style.visibility='hidden';
}

 

I also get the same if i use

 

document.getElementById('tempresult').innerHTML=xmlHttp.responseText;

 

my php page

 

if ($states==false)
{
$result = 'nostates';
$result = trim($result);
return $result;
exit;
}

 

 

i tried it with trim without trim still the same result

[shadiadiph]

solved it at last for some unknown reason javascript was adding an unwanted white space so I am now using my javascript trim function and it works frustrating but fixed from now on i will trim everything.