access PHP Methods with jQuery

Question

I'm completely new to jQuery and Ajax, but I've managed to learn how to do the Hello World, populate a select tag, etc, etc... Problem is, I don't like to use structural PHP. The way I learned I have to call some PHP file with $.getJSON and that file has to "echo" my result. What I want is to be able to call a PHP file that is actually a class with some methods and the return of the method would be what JavaScript would receive instead of just an echo result.

Thanks for your attention.

Ps.: I have a lot of experience with PHP-OOP and Flex+PHP using Amfphp. I'm trying to build a different version of view and I would like to re-use the classes that Flex already use.

Take note of the security implications: prevent javascript (accessing PHP by some code such as in the accepted answer by Jonathan Sampson) from being able to access unwanted methodds. — koen
– koen, Commented Apr 28, 2012 at 17:34

Sampson · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-20 14:57:58Z

jQuery runs on your computer, and PHP runs on the server. PHP and jQuery can only communicate via a series of well-crafted strings. On the server, you are free to create objects, run methods, manipulate output, and anything else. However, if you're going to be feeding that data back into your jQuery application (still running on the client's machine), you'll need to echo (or output) the results of your PHP script.

You may consider something like this:

$.post('server.php', { 'class':'foo', 'method':'bar' }, function( response ) {
  /* do something with the output of $foo->bar(); */
});

As you can see here, I can define the class and method I'd like to have called on the server. From server.php, we would look to $_POST['class'] and $_POST['method'] to determine what we will instantiate, and which methods we will run.

So, either way I'll have to use Structural PHP in order to work with jQuery, right?
@MarcoAurélioDeleu You're not restricted from using classes. You will just need to output something. You can do this from within the object, or not.

alganet · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-20 15:05:49Z

The AMF is somehow different from HTTP, they're different protocols.

When using AJAX (jQuery or not), you're calling HTTP methods on URIs, not OOP methods. So everything ends up in a minimum of two mappings:

Your application logic mapped to methods and URIs.
Your Javascript code mapped to methods and URIs.

Here is a sample using Respect\Rest:

$router->get('/users/*', function($userName) {
    return MyDatabaseLayer::fetchUser($userName); //Illustrative
})->accept(
    'application/json' => function($data) {
        header('Content-type: application/json');
        return json_encode($data);
    }
);

Now the jQuery part:

$.getJSON('/users/alganet', function(user) {
    alert(user.name);
});

You should use appropriate HTTP methods for different actions. Saving an user would be something like:

$router->post('/users/*', function($userName) {
    return MyDatabaseLayer::saveUser($_POST['user']); //Illustrative
});

jQuery:

$.post('/users', $("$userform").serialize());

There are four main HTTP methods: GET, POST, PUT and DELETE. GET and POST are the most common ones.

There is a nice trivia: Both HTTP, REST and AMF were written by the same guy: Roy Fielding.

woa...extreme javascriptified php.... but the basic of this answer is important. It's not a question of jQuery and PHP, that have to work together, but an issue of datatransport via http(s). jQuery doesn't know that there's a PHP script on the server, the PHP script doesn't know that it delivers to an open ajax connection. The PHP script gets invoked on a request, does some calculations and delivers a (HTML/JSON/whatever) string. The inner workings of the script are totally up to you, the crafty programmer
Quick question, maybe you can help me avoid to create another stack question: What about jQuery making AMF calls? Is it possible? Maybe with a gateway between jQuery and AMFPHP, I can make a HTTP Post from jQuery to "Some_HTTP_To_AMF_Gateway" and then this gateway would translate the call. Since I'm already on the server, the call would be locally and I could use everything that I already have on Flex + PHP.
I believe this is possible, but I've never tested anything like this. Considering that AS3 is similar to JavaScript, porting this from somewhere could be easier than expected.

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