PHP Web Service with json not working - php

Question

I am new to web services.I have the following code and when I try to run it on the local host I am not geting the required output...it shows FirstName:undefined LastName:undefined..
following is my code
$(document).ready(function(){
var employees = [
{ "firstName":"John" , "lastName":"Doe" }
];
$.ajax({
url: "MyService.php",
type: "POST",
data: employees,
dataType: "json",
success:function(data) {
alert("Firstname:"+data.firstName+", LastName: "+data.lastName);
},
error:function(data) {
alert('error');
} });
});
The php code is
echo json_encode($_POST);

Answer 1

The value of data should be an object. You are passing an array containing an object. Get rid of the array.
This:
var employees = [
{ "firstName":"John" , "lastName":"Doe" }
];
… is submitting the following to the server:
undefined=
It should be:
var employees = {
"firstName": "John",
"lastName":"Doe"
};
which would submit this:
firstName=John&lastName=Doe
Additionally, you don't appear to be specifying a Content-Type header, so PHP is defaulting to text/html. This is forcing you to write JavaScript that says "Don't believe the server, threat this as JSON and not HTML".
You can fix that with:
header('Content-Type: application/json');
echo json_encode($_POST);