title: jQuery $.ajax request of dataType json will not retrieve data from PHP script
body: <p>I've been looking all over for the solution but I cannot find anything that works.
  I am trying to get a bunch of data from the database and then via AJAX autocomplete input fields in a form. To do this I've decided to use json, because why not, right? Alternatively I've been thinking to just send back a delimited string and then tokenise it, which in hind-sight would've been much easier and spared me the headache... Since I've decided to use json though, I guess I should stick with it and find out what went wrong! 
  What happens is that when the get_member_function() is executed, an error pops up in an alert dialogue and reads "[object Object]". I've tried this also using the GET request, and by setting the contentType to ”application/json; charset=utf-8″. Alas, no dice. Can anyone please suggest what I am doing wrong? Take care, Piotr.</p>
  
  <p>My javascript/jQuery function is as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>function get_member_info()
     {
  
     var url = "contents/php_scripts/admin_scripts.php"; 
     var id = $( "select[ name = member ] option:selected" ).val();
  
     $.ajax(
     {
  
        type: "POST",
        dataType: "json",
        url: url,
        data: { get_member: id },
        success: function( response ) 
        { 
  
            $( "input[ name = type ]:eq( " + response.type + " )" ).attr( "checked", "checked" );
            $( "input[ name = name ]" ).val( response.name );
            $( "input[ name = fname ]" ).val( response.fname );
            $( "input[ name = lname ]" ).val( response.lname );
            $( "input[ name = email ]" ).val( response.email );
            $( "input[ name = phone ]" ).val( response.phone );
            $( "input[ name = website ]" ).val( response.website );
            $( "#admin_member_img" ).attr( "src", "images/member_images/" + response.image );
  
        },
        error: function( error )
        {
  
           alert( error );
  
        }
  
     } );
  
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and the relevant code in "contents/php_scripts/admin_scripts.php" is as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>   if( isset( $_POST[ "get_member" ] ) )
     {
  
        $member_id = $_POST[ "get_member" ];
        $query = "select * from members where id = '$member_id'";
  
        $result = mysql_query( $query );
  
        $row = mysql_fetch_array( $result );
  
        $type = $row[ "type" ];
        $name = $row[ "name" ];
        $fname = $row[ "fname" ];
        $lname = $row[ "lname" ];
        $email = $row[ "email" ];
        $phone = $row[ "phone" ];
        $website = $row[ "website" ];
        $image = $row[ "image" ];
  
        $json_arr = array( "type" =&gt; $type, "name" =&gt; $name, "fname" =&gt; $fname, "lname" =&gt; $lname, "email" =&gt; $email, "phone" =&gt; $phone, "website" =&gt; $website, "image" =&gt; $image );
  
        echo json_encode( $json_arr );
  
     }
  </code></pre>