Update Twitter with AJAX-powered form - php

Question

I'm trying to make an AJAX form that will update a twitter status when updated. I have the form working currently with php, but am not sure how to add AJAX functionality.
Here's the form:
<form id = "yourwhisper" method = "post" >
<label for="whisper">Enter your status update</label>
<textarea id="whisper" name="whisper" rows="2" cols="50" required></textarea>
<label class="error" for="whisper" id="whisper_error">Must be no more than 140 characters.</label>
<input id="lat" name="lat" style = "display:none"></input>
<input id="lon" name="lon" style = "display:none"></input>
<button type="submit" id = "submit">Pass it on</button>
</form>
This is the php which I had as the form action (it calls a php function from a twitter api library). I've now moved it to form-manager.php:
$t->update($_POST["whisper"], false, $_POST["lat"], $_POST["lon"]);
Finally, this is the jQuery code that adds the AJAX functionality. It takes the text for the update, along with the geolocation data, and passes it to the form-manager.php file in the form of the 'dataString'.
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
$(function() {
$('.error').hide();
$(".submit").click(function() {
// validate and process form here
$('.error').hide();
var whisper = $("textarea#whisper").val();
var lat= $("input#lat").val();
var lon = $("input#lon").val();
if (whisper == "") {
$("label#whisper_error").show();
$("textarea#whisper").focus();
return false;
}
var dataString = 'whisper='+ whisper + '&lat=' + lat + '&lon=' + lon;
//alert (dataString);return false;
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "form-manager.php",
data: dataString,
success: function() {
// alert ("form sent");
});
}
});
return false;
});
});
</script>
My problem is, how do I then get form-manager.php to take that info and put it into the 3 variables it needs to update twitter?

Answer 1

the dataString should be available to PHP as $_POST['dataString']. It is only a single var that contains a string. You should explode it.
Or if you want you can set the data property of the ajax method like { whisper: "Foo", lat: "fooLat" } so they will show up like $_POST['whisper'] and $_POST['lat']