Access ajax data, that I store into a PHP function? - php

Question

Maybe I need to go about it another way, but here is what I am trying to do (it's simple) I send data to a PHP function using ajax. Here is an example.
function myAjax(){
//The data here comes from an ajax call
$_POST['id'];
$_POST['x'];
$_POST['y'];
}
The ajax looks like this
jQuery.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: window.ajaxurl,
data: { "action": "myAjax", id: divid, x: pos_x, y: pos_y }})
}
This is not the complete ajax code, this is inside a jQuery UI event but it's irrelevant, the important part is the data:{}
The data from the PHP code is stored into a database, I run code inside the function to interact and add the variables, but again that is irrelevant... how can I access these variables outside of this function?
Lets say I am echoing a div and I want to use $_POST['id'] as an ID for that div. example
echo '<div id="'.$_POST['id'].'"></div>';
This code is obviously outside the function... so I am still a newbie and would be grateful if someone can point this out to me :)

Answer 1

First, in order to understand what data you are getting, you should do a var_dump in PHP:
var_dump($_POST);
This will show a list of key/value pairs, based on that you can then output the information as needed.
Note that jQuery might do some automatic conversion on the data, for example it might convert your object to JSON. In this case, decode the data server-side using json_decode.

Answer 2

Apparently you have to store request params somewhere and then pass them anywhere you need. For instance,
// well, this is quite straightforward
$requestParams = $_POST;
// then pass params to your function
function myAjax(array $params) {
// here you have local copy of your $_POST parameters
// EDITED: you can store data in database and return the result, an ID of
// the row for example
// some insert SQL
$id = mysql_insert_id();
return $id;
}
$newRecordId = myAjax($requestParams);
// here (outside function) you have a global $params variable which you can use
// to echo a div for example