ajax returns page source, not the message

Question

All the answers I saw here or elsewhere on Google were with jquery. This is not jquery.

I send an ajax string to a php file.
The php, among other things, formulates a message string which I echo back to the client.
The returned string is put up in the client as an alert.
The form is then reset.

The problem is that when I do this it puts up as much of the page source that the alert can handle. If I open developer tools to look at the return, it puts the message up correctly, not the page source. Here is the return snippet in my ajax:

ajaxRequest.onreadystatechange = function(){
    if(ajaxRequest.readyState == 4){
        alert(ajaxRequest.responseText);
        document.getElementById("thisForm").reset();
    }
}

The php file does a simple echo of a text string.

What is it about developer tools that makes this run correctly and why doesn't it print out the message in the alert when developer tools is not there?

When I run the backend php by itself, with or without developer tools, it displays the message properly.

Does anyone have any ideas?

More information: I tried to replace the alert and reset with a display.innerHTML=ajaxRequest.responseText where display is a javascript object formed from getElementById("ajaxReturn") of a "div id="ajaxReturn". It didn't work. When I tried developer tools, it showed the network response text as being the page source.

I also added && this.status == 200 to the if statement. No change.

I really feel confused to see your question can you update your question with the proper English language. Your snippet is pure javascript code and this is not full snippet this is the snippet of an XHR request sent to a server and when the response comes back this is the part of response write in client-side javascript. Please review the following link or update your question. developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/XMLHttpRequest/… back — Dipak
I don't understand what you are asking. I read it through three times and still don't understand. The problem was simple. I sent an ajax request. It was processed properly. It was received back and processed in that snippet and put up in an alert. However, what was put up wan't what the server php sent. Rather it was the client page's html source code. When I used developer tools, it put up what the server sen. I found that problem was not there at all. Rather, the element that initiated the ajax had an href="#" in it. Removing that href solved the problem. — Sheldon Glickler

Sheldon Glickler Sheldon Glickler · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-14T21:29:34

The problem is solved. I am not deleting this because it might help some other poster who runs into the same problem. I launched the AJAX with an onclick to a javascript function called ajaxFunction(). The html entity containing the onclick had an href="#" in it. Removing that href solved the problem.

ajax returns page source, not the message

2 Answers