I gotcha. More information is, indeed, better. ;-) So, on the PHP side, you just need to grab the term from the query string, like this: $searchterm = $_GET['query']; And then in your JavaScript code, you'll send an AJAX request, like: http://www.natehill.net/vizstuff/catscrape.php?query=Cooking Is that what you're looking for? --Dave ----------------- David Walker Library Web Services Manager California State University -----Original Message----- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nate Hill Sent: Monday, December 05, 2011 3:00 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] jQuery Ajax request to update a PHP variable As always, I provided too little information. Dave, it's much more involved than that.... I'm trying to make a kind of visual browser of popular materials from one of our branches from a .csv file. In order to display book covers for a series of searches by keyword, I query the catalog, scrape out only the syndetics images, and then display 4 of them. The problem is that I've hardcoded in a search for 'Drawing', rather than dynamically pulling the correct term and putting it into the catalog query. Here's the work in process, and I believe it will only work in Chrome right now. http://www.natehill.net/vizstuff/donerightclasses.php I may have a solution, Jason's idea got me part way there. I looked all over the place for that little snippet he sent over! Thanks! On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 2:44 PM, Walker, David <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > And I want to update 'Drawing' to be 'Cooking' w/ a jQuery hover > > effect on the client side then I need to make an Ajax request, correct? > > What you probably want to do here, Nate, is simply output the PHP > variable in your HTML response, like this: > > <h1 id="foo"><?php echo $searchterm ?></h1> > > And then in your JavaScript code, you can manipulate the text through > the DOM like this: > > $('#foo').html('Cooking'); > > --Dave > > ----------------- > David Walker > Library Web Services Manager > California State University > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf > Of Nate Hill > Sent: Monday, December 05, 2011 2:09 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: [CODE4LIB] jQuery Ajax request to update a PHP variable > > If I have in my PHP script a variable... > > $searchterm = 'Drawing'; > > And I want to update 'Drawing' to be 'Cooking' w/ a jQuery hover > effect on the client side then I need to make an Ajax request, correct? > What I can't figure out is what that is supposed to look like... > something like... > > $.ajax({ > type: "POST", > url: "myfile.php", > data: "...not sure how to write what goes here to make it 'Cooking'..." > }); > > Any ideas? > > > -- > Nate Hill > [log in to unmask] > http://www.natehill.net > -- Nate Hill [log in to unmask] http://www.natehill.net