PHP request through AJAX fails

Question

This is probably something very simple, and I've seen that there are/have been more people with the same issue. But the solutions provided there did not seem to work.

So, I want to execute a .php file through AJAX. For the sake of testing the php file (consolefunctions) is very small.

<?php
if(isset($_POST['action'])) {
<script>console.log('consolefunctions.php called.');</script>
}
?>

And now for the javascript/ajax part.

$(".startConsole").click(function(){
    var consoleID = $(this).attr("value");
    $.ajax({ url: 'include/consolefunctions.php',
        type: 'post',
        data: {action: 'dosomething'},      
        success: function(output) {
            //alert("meeh");
        }
    });
});

Somewhere, somehow there's an issue because the message from the PHP file never shows. I've tested the location from the php file, which is valid.

Answer 1

First the php code is not correct, you should add an echo

<?php
if(isset($_POST['action'])) {
 echo"<script>console.log('consolefunctions.php called.');</script>";
}
?>

but the problem is, when you send this code to js, you'll get it as a string on your variable output, not as a code that will be executed after making the ajax call, so the best way to do this is to echo only the message to display on your console and then once you receive this message you can call console.log function

<?php
if(isset($_POST['action'])) {
 echo"consolefunctions.php called";
}
?>

in the success function :

console.log(output);