Using jQuery and json to grab current user

Question

I am working on a project and am stuck. I am new to jQuery and JSON and I want to grab the current logged in user. I am able to pull the all the information from the user table, but I just want the user name so I can display it. I want to eventually append the current user to a html element

js code

var getUser = function(){

            $.ajax({
                url: 'xhr/get_user.php',
                type: 'get',
                dataType: 'json',
                success: function(response){
                    if(response.error){
                        console.log(response.error);
                    }else{
                        console.log(response);
                        //$('#current_user').append(response);

                    }
                }

            });

        };

php code

<?php

            // check if logged in
            // per project or all tasks?
            // 

            error_reporting(E_ALL);

            session_start();
            session_regenerate_id(false);

            require_once("reqs/common.php");
            require_once("reqs/pdo.php");
            //require_once("reqs/auth.php");

            checkLoggedIn();

            $userID = param($_GET, 'userID', $_SESSION["user"]);

            $dbh = new PDB();
            $db = $dbh->db;

            $user = $dbh->getUser($userID);

            exitjson(array("user"=>$user));

            ?>

Answer 1

Just use $.getJSON

$.getJSON("xhr/get_user.php",function(userData){  
    console.log(userData);
}).fail(function(xhr,textStatus,err){
    console.log("error",err);
});

And remember to add JSON type header to php respond.

An example of PHP:

header('Content-type: application/json');
echo json_encode($user);