passing form value into php without submitting the form - php

Question

I am building a step by step form. At the first step, people enter their email. Then after they clicked next step, it gets the security question from database.
Here is the problem, is it possible to get data from database without submitting the from? I found people used AJAX. I am new to it. like i have the first step code here:
<div>
step 1
<input type='text' name='email' id='email' maxlength="50" />
nextstepbutton goes here
</div>
and this is step 2 code:
<div>
step 2
<label><?php echo getSecurityQuestion($emailvalue) ?></label>
</div>
How can I pass the value of 'email' into $emailvalue?

Answer 1

give your next button an id. Then say if you're using jquery you could do something along the lines of
$('#next-button').click(function () {
$.get('filename.php', { action: 'get_security_question', email: $('#email').val() }, function (data) {
$('#security_question').val(data['message']);
});
});
over in your php something like
if ($_GET['action'] === 'get_security_question') return "Here's your question for {$_GET['email']}.";
That is very vague and just a general outline but should give you an idea of how it kinda works.

Answer 2

Well you can do it without a form but you would have to use AJAX eg:
<input type="text" name="email" id="email" maxLength="50" />
<input type="button" value="Send" onClick="submitEmail()" />
You would need a JS function like:
function submitEmail(){
var emailAdd = document.getElementByID("email").value ;
// here you would hook into whatever ajax httprequest method you prefer
}