Which to use: jquery .ajax or .post?

[neophyte]

Hello All -

Even though I've been coding php for years now, I'm just (amazingly) getting into javascript and jquery.

So far so good, but I'm confused by the various arguments and syntax needed for $.ajax or $.post functions when interacting with a database.

Is one better/more flexible than the other (it would seem that .ajax is more flexible).

I'm really getting into this now and would like to start off right - any suggestions gratefully accepted!

Also, if anyone can point me to some good newbie tutorials (on or off-list) for jquery database functions (.ajax/.post/whatever) that would also be great.

[daveVk]

[api.jquery.com...] says for $.post

This is a shorthand Ajax function, which is equivalent to:

$.ajax({
type: 'POST',
url: url,
data: data,
success: success,
dataType: dataType
});

Similarly for $.load $.get etc. Master $.ajax, the rest are for convenience.

[Fotiman]

It's important to note that jQuery/JavaScript does not do any direct interacting with a database. You can send HTTP requests to the server, but you still need some page on the server to handle the request and communicate with the database (probably a PHP page in your case).

Also, the jQuery API documentation is a good place to start. It's fairly well documented. :)