[wp-hackers] AJAX Hooks and JSON String

[James Kirsop]

Hi All,
I'm currently in the process of writing my own theme with a custom
management page for some of the features on the front end. As a challenge to
myself, I've been hoping to process all the form data I've got via AJAX - to
avoid page reloads, and to learn more about how WP handles AJAX requests
etc.

At the moment, I'm serialising an array of javascript objects
using JSON.stringify() to result in a string that looks like the following
(using a bunch of test data for the moment):
[{"link":"Test 1","title":"Test 1","text":"Test
1","image_url":""},{"link":"Test 2","title":"Test 2","text":"Test
2","image_url":""},{"link":"Test 3","title":"Test 3","text":"Test
3","image_url":""},{"link":"Test 4","title":"Test 4","text":"Test
4","image_url":""}]
Basically, 4 objects, with 4 values in each, but the idea is to have the
number of objects increase/decrease as needed. I realise that there's built
in functionality for handling form data in JQuery, but I'd like to be able
to iterate over the objects to build the data I want to store as an option
(using update_option()).

The method described in the codex [1] for processing AJAX requests and
adding hooks, seems to require a single object of data, with an 'action'
variable with a value to point wordpress to the correct hook and hence PHP
function, alongside the rest of the data. I'm currently struggling to work
out how to add the 'action' and a corresponding value into my JSON string,
have WP find that data, take it, and then execute the appropriate function.
I've posted [2] the javascript that's creating the array with objects, that
then go to the JSON string for people to take a look at.

Thanks!
James

[1] http://codex.wordpress.org/AJAX_in_Plugins
[2] http://pastie.org/2584753