Submitting a form with ajax in Wordpress - php

Question

I am trying to get the results of an ajax request in wordpress, but I am getting result of '0' in an alert box of javascript, so the form looks like this:
<form class="form" id="ajax-contact-form" action="#">
<input type="text" name="name" id="name" placeholder="Name" required="">
<button type="submit" class="btn">Submit</button>
</form>
The javascript looks like this:
$('#ajax-contact-form').submit(function(e){
$.ajax({
data: {action: 'contact_form'},
type: 'post',
url: ajaxurl,
success: function(data) {
alert(data); // This prints '0', I want this to print whatever name the user inputs in the form.
}
});
})
And the PHP:
add_action('wp_ajax_contact_form', 'contact_form');
add_action('wp_ajax_nopriv_contact_form', 'contact_form');
function contact_form()
{
echo $_POST['name'];
}
Does anyone know if the code above is correct, I have also tried $_REQUEST['name'] and it doesnt work.
Thanks soo much,

Answer 1

Try something like this, you did not add the name parameter you are expecting in your PHP contact_form function, so you must add it to the data attribute in the jQuery ajax function call.
$('#ajax-contact-form').submit(function(e){
var name = $("#name").val();
$.ajax({
data: {action: 'contact_form', name:name},
type: 'post',
url: ajaxurl,
success: function(data) {
console.log(data); //should print out the name since you sent it along
}
});
});

Answer 2

Revisiting the answer, year is 2022. The Accepted answer is accepting BLINDLY any AJAX request without verifying WordPress Nonces. AJAX request should be validated as a legitimate request instead of a potentially nefarious request from some unknown bad actor.
#see https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/javascript/enqueuing/#nonce
The first thing your AJAX handler should do is verify the nonce sent by jQuery with check_ajax_referer(), which should be the same value that was localized when the script was enqueued.
First we pass the AJAX url and create and pass our nonce through wp_localize_script(). wp_localize_script() must be called after the script has been registered using wp_register_script() or wp_enqueue_script().
<?php
wp_localize_script( 'script', 'localize',
array(
'_ajax_url' => admin_url( 'admin-ajax.php' ),
'_ajax_nonce' => wp_create_nonce( '_ajax_nonce' ),
)
);
From our script.js file we declare our AJAX function.
$(function(){
$('button').click(() => {
$.ajax({
type: 'POST',
url: localize._ajax_url,
data: {
_ajax_nonce: localize._ajax_nonce,
test: 'test',
/**
* The action parameter is the The dynamic portion of the wp_ajax_{$action} action hook (Ajax action callback being fired).
*
* #see https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/wp_ajax_action/
* #see https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/wp_ajax_nopriv__requestaction/
*/
action: '_POST_action',
},
success: (res) => {
console.log(res);
}
});
});
});
And we process the result and send a JSON response back to an Ajax request.
<?php
add_action( 'wp_ajax__POST_action', function () {
if ( check_ajax_referer( '_ajax_nonce' ) ) {
$test = $_POST['test'];
//...
wp_send_json_success();
} else {
wp_send_json_error();
};
} );

Answer 3

You should add an attribute for name too in your javascript.
It may look like this........
$('#ajax-contact-form').submit(function(e){
$.ajax({
data: {action: 'contact_form', name:name},
type: 'post',
url: ajaxurl,
success: function(data) {
alert(data);
}
});
})

Answer 4

You should include this script in functions.php
wp_register_script('my_script_handle','');
wp_add_inline_script('my_script_handle', "var techy_ajaxurl = '".admin_url( 'admin-ajax.php' )."';" );
wp_enqueue_script( 'my_script_handle' );
and in js change to this
$.ajax({
data: {action: 'contact_form', name:name},
type: 'post',
url: techy_ajaxurl,
success: function(data) {
alert(data);
}
});
It will work 100% tested