How to use jQuery AJAX for asynchronous data transfers

Using jQuery AJAX will allow your website to respond to user interactions dynamically. jQuery AJAX makes it possible to retrieve or send data from the server, update content and more, without having to completely reload the page. Asynchronous data transfers with jQuery AJAX ensures responsive web applications.

What are jQuery.ajax() methods?

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. The JavaScript scripting language and the jQuery library include AJAX methods for asynchronous exchange of data between a client and a server. jQuery AJAX requests use JavaScript’s XMLHttpRequest object internally. Asynchronous HTTP requests are sent via AJAX to the web server, which returns the response in a specific format, like XML or JSON. This allows individual sections of a web page to be updated without having to reload the entire page. AJAX has the benefits of being flexible and compatible with jQuery in WordPress.

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What are the jQuery.ajax() methods?

To understand how .ajax() methods work, some basic understanding of jQuery is required. That’s why we recommend taking a look at our jQuery tutorial before diving into AJAX.

  • ajax(): sends asynchronous HTTP requests to the server
  • get(): sends an HTTP GET request to load the data from the server
  • post(): sends a jQuery AJAX post request to submit certain data to the server.
  • getJSON(): transmits a jQuery AJAX GET request to the server and expects the response in JSON format.
  • getScript(): sends an HTTP GET request to get and execute a JavaScript file from a server
  • load(): sends an HTTP request to load HTML or text from the server and attach it to DOM elements
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Application example for jQuery.ajax() methods

jQuery.ajax() can also be combined with classic jQuery functions like jQuery.click(), jQuery.append() and jQuery.each().

In the following example, we reference the text ‘This is a jQuery AJAX example’ from the URL /jquery/getdata. The text has been transferred as the first argument to the jQuery.ajax() method. To allocate the second parameter, we decided to use a callback function which handles the server response and inserts the data inside the p tag in the DOM. The .ajax() method sends a GET request to the appropriate server by default. The sending of the jQuery AJAX request is triggered by a click event from the btn button. After that, the text is displayed in the browser.

<!DOCTYPE html>
                
<html>
<head>
     <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.2/jquery.min.js">
     </script>
     <script type="text/javascript">
      $(document).ready(function () {
     $('#btn').click(function(){
          $.ajax('/jquery/getdata', // request url
                {
                success: function (data, status, xhr) { // success callback function
                                     $('p').append(data);
                }
          });
          });
      });
     </script>
</head>
<body>
     <input type="button" id="btn" value="send jQuery AJAX request" />
     <p></p>
</body>
</html>
html

As output we get:

This is a jQuery AJAX example
text
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