Execute PHP GET dynamically - php

Question

I currently have a php script which is loaded by Javascript when a button is clicked.
It creates all the html content which looks like this once loaded
<ul>
<li>
<a href='foo.php?var=abc123'>
</li>
<li>
<a href='foo.php?var=def123'>
</li>
</ul>
So when a link is clicked, it uses GET to send PHP variable to same script, and it brings up another list of results.
What I want to do, is when you click a link instead of going to a new page with results, it loads them below this part to result in something like this (like a treeview():
<ul>
<li>
abc123
</li>
<ul>
<li>
jkl123
</li>
<li>
ghi123
</li>
</ul>
<li>
def123
</li>
</ul>
I can get it to work if I use static variables, but i need to find a way to take the variable from the created html on click, put it into the javascript function, so it can execute the PHP script.
Thanks.

Answer 1

It sounds like you're going to want to use AJAX:
$.ajax({
type: 'GET',
url: "yoururlhere.com",
data: {
someparam: "somevalue",
param2: "anothervalue"
},
dataType: "json",
success: function (JSONdata, textStatus, jqXHR) {
// do work here on success
}
});
You can attach it to a click handler like this:
$("someID").on("click",function(){
event.preventDefault();
var href = $(this).attr("href");
$.ajax({
type: 'GET',
url: href ,
data: "param=value&param2=anothervalue",
success: function (JSONdata, textStatus, jqXHR) {
// do work here on success
}
});
});
Update:
Some example HTML to go along with the above code:
<a id="someID" href="yoururl.php">Click me</a>