How to empty the GET values from a MySQL/jQuery ajax call - php

Question

If you do an ajax call to retrieve info from a MySQL database and you time the function so it runs every X seconds, I am a bit confused about where do the GET values reside, in order to empty them.
I have this code in test.js:
var fill = function () {
$.ajax({
type: "GET",
url: "refresh.php",
dataType: "html",
success: function( data ) {
$( "#tb" ).append( data );
setTimeout( fill, 5000);
}
});
} ;
and in refresh.php I have the SQL query to retrieve the info. After the query, I setting the table like this:
printf( "<tr><td>".$row['name'].
"</td><td>".$row['surname'].
"</td><td>".$row['phone'].
"</td><td>".$row['date'].
"</td></td></tr>");
How can I stop the table from populating the same row every 5 seconds? I can pass the $row['name'] values to regular php values if needed, but I don't fully get in which moment I should empty them.

Answer 1

There might be another solution to this, but I think that my problem could be easily solved by removing the contents of the table before adding another. For instance:
var fill = function () {
$.ajax({
type: "GET",
url: "refresh.php",
dataType: "html",
success: function(data) {
$('#tb').empty().append(data);
}
});
};
setInterval(fill, 5000);
You can also make use of setInterval() so that you don't need to define a timeout on every execution.
That will do.
Thanks!