Call PHP Function using jQuery AJAX

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You cannot call a function in a PHP file from Javascript, full stop. The client (here: Javascript) can only communicate with the server (here: PHP) through the HTTP protocol. The HTTP protocol has no notion of files, functions or programming languages. This means you’re limited to transmitting information via the URL or HTTP headers. As such, you can never call a PHP function from Javascript, all you can do is request a URL which returns data.

So, by requesting a URL, say http://example.com/myscript.php, the script myscript.php gets invoked. This script now has to figure out what it should do and output some response. This script can actually call PHP functions, e.g.:

// myscript.php

include 'functions.php'
echo generateCode();

As such, whenever you request the URL http://exmaple.com/myscript.php, you will get the output of the function generateCode(). You may notice that this works the same as when you visit a URL with a web browser. That’s because this is the only mechanism to run code through a web server using the HTTP protocol and hence the only way Javascript can “call PHP functions”. Javascript has no secret backdoor to call PHP functions directly.

Hope this helps.

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