Passing a PHP variable to javascript and onto external page

I'm just trying to learn a few handy AJAX things, so I'm not sure quite how well I'll explain this. I apologise in advance if I go into too much or too little detail.

I apologise as well if this is a simple thing - I'm hoping that learning the nuts and bolts of it here will prevent me from having to ask it again.

Basically I found an example of editing within a page that I thought was really good (example is here). It did mention that it would have no way of saving the end result, so I tinkered with the suggested edit.php file.

I am using the code in a private notepad page. Individual notepads are saved in a MySql database and get called in the url, i.e. /editnotepad.php?notepadid=2. The only problem was that it wasn't passing over the $notepadid to the edit.php page, so I had to cheat. :nono:

Here are the full codes.

editnotepad.php is parsed to this:

HTML Code:

---

    <script src="ajax/prototype.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="ajax/editinplace.js" type="text/javascript"></script>   
   
<h1>Test notepad</h1>
<p id="desc">This is a test.

---

edit.php is this (spot the blatantly obvious cheat):

PHP Code:

---

<?php 
     $id = $_POST['id']; 
     $content = $_POST['content']; 
     $notepadid = $_POST['notepadid']; 
     echo htmlspecialchars($content); 

include("$DOCUMENT_ROOT/project/config/dbdetails.inc"); 

// Establish connection since we are going to use the database throughout page 
$dbLink = mysql_connect(DATABASE_HOST, DATABASE_USER, DATABASE_PASSWORD); 
if(!$dbLink) { 
        print "Unable to connect to the database, please contact Sysadmin asap."; 
} else { 
   $dbUse = mysql_select_db(DATABASE_NAME, $dbLink); 
} 


// following section for testing purposes 
if (!$notepadid){ 
  // set $notepadid if not already set 
  $notepadid = 2; 
// end test section 
} 
  

$result = mysql_query("UPDATE notepads SET `notes` = '$content' WHERE id = '$notepadid'"); 
  if (mysql_errno()>0) { 
    echo "<BR>\n<FONT COLOR=\"#990000\">".mysql_errno().": ".mysql_error()."<BR>\n"; 
    exit; 
    } 
            mysql_close($dbLink); 

 ?>

---

editinplace.js is this:

Code:

---

Event.observe(window, 'load', init, false);


function init(){
            makeEditable('desc');
            makeEditable('pizza');
}


function makeEditable(id){
            Event.observe(id, 'click', function(){edit($(id))}, false);
            Event.observe(id, 'mouseover', function(){showAsEditable($(id))}, false);
            Event.observe(id, 'mouseout', function(){showAsEditable($(id), true)}, false);
}


function edit(obj){
            Element.hide(obj);
           
            var textarea = '<div id="'+obj.id+'_editor"><textarea id="'+obj.id+'_edit" name="'+obj.id+'" rows="4" cols="60">'+obj.innerHTML+'</textarea>';
            var button          = '<div><input id="'+obj.id+'_save" type="button" value="SAVE" /> OR <input id="'+obj.id+'_cancel" type="button" value="CANCEL" /></div></div>';
           
            new Insertion.After(obj, textarea+button);           
                       
            Event.observe(obj.id+'_save', 'click', function(){saveChanges(obj)}, false);
            Event.observe(obj.id+'_cancel', 'click', function(){cleanUp(obj)}, false);
           
}


function showAsEditable(obj, clear){
            if (!clear){
                        Element.addClassName(obj, 'editable');
            }else{
                        Element.removeClassName(obj, 'editable');
            }
}


function saveChanges(obj){
           
            var new_content            =  escape($F(obj.id+'_edit'));


            obj.innerHTML  = "Saving...";
            cleanUp(obj, true);


            var success      = function(t){editComplete(t, obj);}
            var failure          = function(t){editFailed(t, obj);}


            var url = 'edit.php';
            var pars = 'id='+obj.id+'&content='+new_content+;
            var myAjax = new Ajax.Request(url, {method:'post', postBody:pars, onSuccess:success, onFailure:failure});


}


function cleanUp(obj, keepEditable){
            Element.remove(obj.id+'_editor');
            Element.show(obj);
            if (!keepEditable) showAsEditable(obj, true);
}


function editComplete(t, obj){
            obj.innerHTML  = t.responseText;
            showAsEditable(obj, true);
}


function editFailed(t, obj){
            obj.innerHTML  = 'Sorry, the update failed.';
            cleanUp(obj);
}

---

The amendment I attempted to make to editinplace.js was this:

Code:

---

            var pars = 'id='+obj.id+'&content='+new_content+'&notepadid='+;

---

No luck when I took out the test section from edit.php though.

So how should I go about passing $notepadid through to edit.php?

P.S. I know that there are certain pages available via Google which mention about passing a PHP variable to Javascript, but I wasn't sure if passing these onto separate pages made matters more complicated than that.