Problem passing email address through AJAX

[positrix]

I am facing problems passing an email address to a php file through AJAX. The code I am using is pretty basic but I can't seem to get it to work. Could anyone help me understand what's going wrong? I amd pretty new to Ajax (about 2 days old) so please forgive me if this seems pretty lame.

function emailchk () {
	if (!document.getElementById("email").value) {
		document.getElementById("emailmsg").innerHTML = " ";
	}
	else {
		url = "emailchk.php?email=" + document.getElementById("email").value;
		if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
			xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
		}
		else {
			if (window.ActiveXObject) {
				try {
					xhr = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
				}
				catch (e) { }
			}
		}
	
		if (xhr) {
			xhr.onreadystatechange = showEmailContents;
			xhr.open("GET", url, true);
			xhr.send(null);
		}
		else {
			alert("Sorry, but I couldn't create an XMLHttpRequest");
		}
		return false;
	}
}

function showEmailContents() {
	if (xhr.readyState == 4) {
		if (xhr.status == 200) {
			var outMsg = xhr.responseText;
		}
		else {
			var outMsg = "There was a problem with the request " + xhr.status;
		}
		document.getElementById("emailmsg").innerHTML = outMsg;
		if (outMsg == "Email already exists") {
			document.getElementById("validate").value = "no";
		}
		else {
			document.getElementById("validate").value = "yes";
		}
	}
}

The PHP file is also pretty basic...

<?php
include ("dbconfig.php");
$sql = "select name from users where email = '$_POST[email]'";
$result = mysql_query ($sql, $conn) or die ("could not query database");

if (mysql_num_rows($result)) {
	print "Email already exists";
}
else {
	print "Email is available";
}

?>

Thanks in advance...

[essential]

Try to recall all the lines of your code!

function emailchk () 
{ //Refering to what value?--> 
if (!document.getElementById("email").value) {
document.getElementById("emailmsg").innerHTML = " ";
}
else {
url = "emailchk.php?email=" + document.getElementById("email").value; //Missing curly!-->

} //So we'l have to add our end curly for this block! 

if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
}

/* else { * This is not necessary for this line! */

if (window.ActiveXObject) {
try {
xhr = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
catch (e) { }
}
if (xhr) {
xhr.onreadystatechange = showEmailContents;
xhr.open("GET", url, true);
xhr.send(null);
}
else {
alert("Sorry, but I couldn't create an XMLHttpRequest");
}
return false;
}

function showEmailContents() {
if (xhr.readyState == 4&& xhr.status == 200) {
var outMsg = xhr.responseText;
}
else {
var outMsg = "There was a problem with the request " + xhr.status;
}
document.getElementById("emailmsg").innerHTML = outMsg;

if (outMsg == "Email already exists") {
document.getElementById ("validate").value = "no";
}
else {
document.getElementById ("validate").value = "yes";
  }
}

Am not sure if this wil work, but it never hurts to try!
Good day to you!

[positrix]

Actually the code is working but it doesn't seem to pass the email address to the php file. If I try to pass a normal string that seems to work - but for some reason, I cannot pass an email address as a GET variable. Can it be something to do with the @ sign?

[poddarpallavi22]

If you are able to pass other strings except email them try to url encode the email to send it
u can do the following
url = "emailchk.php?email=" +URLencode(document.getElementById("email").value);

It should work fine.

[~s.o.s~]

> Can it be something to do with the @ sign?

Yes.

Make sure you *always* encode user entered data; at least when making asynchronous calls using Ajax. Normal submits automatically encode the form data for you. Use encodeURIComponent.