Passing a PHP variable to javascript and onto external page

[Toneboy]

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.

Here are the full codes.

editnotepad.php is parsed to this:

     <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 
     $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:

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:

            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.