PHPBuilder.com has posted part two of their look at combining Ajax and PHP. They take things a step further than last time and look at the actual communication between the script and the server.

AJAX and PHP 5 both have powerful features for processing and using an XML document. XML is a method of formatting data often for communication purposes between different computer systems. In this article, we will show you how to access an XML document with AJAX!

They create a script that can load the XML information from a file and echo it back out to the waiting client script. They also include the other half - the client-side javascript that grabs the XML information, parses it, and pushed it into a javascript object for easy access.