ajax request php class function - url

Question

i have content listed in a div and i have a dropdown with various options to order and filter that content.
I'm using ajax to filter/order that content and is working but i use other php page with the content i want on the div that has the content, like this
function order(str){
$.post("order_products.php",
{
q: str,
},
function(data, status){
document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML = data;
});
}
What i wanted was to instead of putting the code (data) to change in another page just for that, i could put that code inside a class php function that i have.
<?php
class products{
function list(){
blablabla
}
That way i would "save space" and organize everything, considering that i have many other things to order/filter but i don't know to to make the ajax request to that function, or if it's possible without having a page in between and then get the response from the function and put it on the div.

Answer 1

You can do this using Laravel by setting up a route to a function that will do the ordering. Please note I've made a lot of assumptions in the following answer as I can't see all your code and have made it quite general, please adjust the code to your project or provide more details of your code if you don't understand the answer fully.
routes.php
Route::post('products/order', [
'as' => 'products.order',
'uses' => 'ProductsController#orderProducts'
]);
Your view (assuming you're using blade)
$txtHint = $('#txtHint'); // grab the reference to txtHint dropdown
$.post( '{{ route("products.order") }}', // hit our route
{
q: str,
},
function(data, status){
$txtHint.empty(); // clear the dropdown
// loop through the data and assign each element to the dropdown
$.each(data, function(value, key) {
$txtHint.append($("<option></option>")
.attr("value", value)
.text(key));
});
});
ProductsController.php
public function orderProducts()
{
$orderBy = \Input::get('q');
return \Products::lists('name', 'id')->orderBy($orderBy);
}
For outside of a framework just change the url to your php file and add in a data attribute for the method you require to be fired from the file.
$.post( 'products.php', // hit our route
{
action: 'order',
q: str,
},
...
Then in products.php you'd do something like this
if(isset($_POST['action']) && !empty($_POST['action'])) {
$action = $_POST['action'];
switch($action) {
case 'order' : order();break;
case 'otherFunction' : otherFunction();break;
}
}
function order()
{
// order logic here
// get $_POST['q']
// do your ordering
// return data as json
}
See here for similar question: using jquery $.ajax to call a PHP function