Serializing and submitting a form with jQuery and PHP

Question

I'm trying to send a form's data using jQuery. However, data does not reach the server. Can you please tell me what I'm doing wrong?

My HTML form:

<form id="contactForm" name="contactForm" method="post">
    <input type="text" name="nume" size="40" placeholder="Nume">
    <input type="text" name="telefon" size="40" placeholder="Telefon">
    <input type="text" name="email" size="40" placeholder="Email">
    <textarea name="comentarii" cols="36" rows="5" placeholder="Message"></textarea> 
    <input id="submitBtn" type="submit" name="submit" value="Trimite">
</form>

JavaScript (in the same file as the above form):

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function(e) {

        $("#contactForm").submit(function() {
            $.post("getcontact.php", $("#contactForm").serialize())
            // Serialization looks good: name=textInNameInput&&telefon=textInPhoneInput etc
            .done(function(data) {
                if (data.trim().length > 0) {
                    $("#sent").text("Error");   
                } else {
                    $("#sent").text("Success");
                }
            });

            return false;
        })
    });
</script>

Server side PHP (/getcontact.php):

$nume = $_REQUEST["nume"]; // $nume contains no data. Also tried $_POST
$email = $_REQUEST["email"];
$telefon = $_REQUEST["telefon"];
$comentarii = $_REQUEST["comentarii"];

Can you please tell me what I am doing wrong?

---

UPDATE

Checked var_dump($_POST) and it returned an empty array.

The weird thing is that the same code tested on my local machine works fine. If I upload the files on my hosting space it stops working. I tried doing an old-fashioned form without using jQuery and all data was correct.

I don't see how this would be a server configuration problem. Any ideas?

Thank you!

Answer 1

You can use this function

var datastring = $("#contactForm").serialize();
$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "your url.php",
    data: datastring,
    dataType: "json",
    success: function(data) {
        //var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(data); if the dataType is not specified as json uncomment this
        // do what ever you want with the server response
    },
    error: function() {
        alert('error handling here');
    }
});

return type is json

EDIT: I use event.preventDefault to prevent the browser getting submitted in such scenarios.

Adding more data to the answer.

dataType: "jsonp" if it is a cross-domain call.

beforeSend: // this is a pre-request call back function

complete: // a function to be called after the request ends.so code that has to be executed regardless of success or error can go here

async: // by default, all requests are sent asynchronously

cache: // by default true. If set to false, it will force requested pages not to be cached by the browser.

Find the official page here