Problems with PHP SQL HTML & AJAX submission - php

Question

So I have yet another problem,
I am trying to get an AJAX script to work, but upon click the page will reload but fail to UPDATE the database field.
The code im using I have working for other similar scripts on the site but for some reason this one, using the same code doesnt work, the code used follows below;
HTML code to send the call to AJAX:
<input onClick="read('<? echo $id; ?>')" id="read" name="read" type="checkbox" value="1" style="position:relative; top:2px; width: auto">
The code to confirm user selection and send onto a form handling file:
function read(ID) {
if(confirm('Are you sure you have read this carefully, you will not be alerted again "' + ID + '" ?')) {
$.get('http://<? echo ROOT . ADMIN . INCLUDES; ?>formHandling.php', { read: ID }, function(data) {
window.location.href = 'http://<? echo $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].""; ?>';
});
}
return false;
}
Lastly the code to handle the SQL query:
if (isset($_GET['read'])) {
// Pass the GET data and associate them to variables
$read = trim($_GET['read']);
$query = "UPDATE cms_motd SET read='$read' WHERE id='1'";
$result = mysql_query($query)or die("Database query died: " . mysql_error());
unset($_GET['readConfirm']);
}
Thanks in advance for all that help.
Regards,
Dan.

Answer 1

Don't you mean:
$query = "UPDATE cms_motd SET read='1' WHERE id='$read'";
Instead of:
$query = "UPDATE cms_motd SET read='$read' WHERE id='1'";
Edit:
I don't know if it is a copy&past error:
$result = mysql_query($query);or die("Database query died: " . mysql_error());
Needs to be:
$result = mysql_query($query) or die("Database query died: " . mysql_error());

Answer 2

I have some challenges with the fact that you do the query but don't give your code any feedback to continue. For example, what if the query fails? Do you just press on?
Here's how I handle these sort of Ajax transactions (yes, longhand!)
$('#read').click(function() {
$("#div").dialog({ //Shows dialog
height: 250,
width: 450,
modal: true,
buttons: {
"Cancel": function() {
$( this ).dialog( "close" );
},
"Save": function() {
$.ajax({
url: "url.php", //
timeout: 30000,
type: "POST",
data: $('#form').serialize(),
dataType: 'json',
error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) {
alert("An error has occurred making the request: " + errorThrown)
},
success: function(data){
$('#updatediv).html(data.stuff);
src="web/imgs/icons/24deleteB.png"></td>';
}
$( this ).dialog( "close" );
}
}
});
});
Now, the URL.php will do the query and return a json_encoded string back to the AJAX that will then be able to know if the transaction was succesful via the success/error functions. You could do additional conditioning on the success case to ensure that something was saved a particular way or that a result matched a case that you wanted it to before doing something. On success, I show just a simple .html inner html type action, but you could do any quantity or variety of things such as show/hide, inner html, etc. The choice is yours. Also, note that I use Jquery UI dialogs instead of system dialogs, so you'd need Jquery UI to make it look pretty if you used this verbatim. Finally, rather than onclick note that I'm using the .click functionality that Jquery provides, which is just a hair cleaner.