OPTIONS request being made for $.ajax - php

Question

I have the following code which,currently im running on my local machine.I am making a call to a php script called getxml.php,which should send the contents of an xml file as the response.
But,instead of a GET request, in Firebug i see that an OPTIONS request is being made, like
OPTIONS getxml.php . I think im not making a cross domain Ajax request,but still am facing this problem . Any way to fix this ?
var employee_list = new Object;
$(function(){
$.ajax({
type:"GET",
url:"http://localhost/projectname/getxml.php",
datatype:"xml",
success: function(xml){
$(xml).find('employee').each(function(){
var name_text = $(this).find('name').text();
var url_text = $(this).find('url').text();
employee_list[name_text] = url_text;
$('<li></li>').html(name_text + ' (' + url_text + ')').appendTo('#update-target ol');
});
} //closing function
}); //closing $.ajax
}); //closing $(
getxml.php
<?php
//Send the xml file as response
header('Content-type: text/xml');
readfile('employee_results.xml');
?>
Thank You

Answer 1

Make sure getxml.php exists. OPTIONS usually means you have a slight misspelling.

Answer 2

change datatype to dataType and see if that fixes your problem. The rest of the code looks right.
edit: also, I'm not a PHP pro, but I wrote a map application which uses a similar approach. To return xml, I used:
header("Status: 200");
header("Content-type: text/xml");
echo file_get_contents($q,0); /*$q is the query/filename*/
exit();
I remember reading somewhere that header("Status: 200"); was required.
edit: Here is how I've done the same thing. I hope this helps.
/* call ajax method to retrieve earthquakes */
$.ajax({
type: "GET",
url: "../getxml.php?q=" + xmlLocation,
dataType: "xml",
success: function(xml){
$(xml).find('entry').each(function(){
/* Retrieve all needed values from XML */
var title = $(this).find('title').text();
var summary = $(this).find('summary').text();
var coord = $(this).find('georss\\:point').eq(0).text();
if(!coord){var coord = $(this).find('point').text();};
var points = coord.split(' ');
var latitude = parseFloat(points[0]);
var longitude = parseFloat(points[1]);
var htmlString = "<div class=\"infowindow\"><b>" +
title + "</b>" + "<p>" + summary + "<br></div>";
var myLatlng = new google.maps.LatLng(latitude,longitude);
var marker = new google.maps.Marker(
{
position: myLatlng,
map: map,
title: title
});
markers[markers.length] = marker;
addInfoWindow(marker, map, htmlString);
$('#output').text("Showing " + markers.length + " earthquakes");
});/* end each */
}
}); /* end $.ajax */
The php file is exactly as I posted above, but with "security" to respond only to ajax requests.