How do I return a proper success/error message for JQuery .ajax() using PHP?

Some people recommend using HTTP status codes, but I rather despise that practice. e.g. If you're doing a search engine and the provided keywords have no results, the suggestion would be to return a 404 error.

However, I consider that wrong. HTTP status codes apply to the actual browser<->server connection. Everything about the connect went perfectly. The browser made a request, the server invoked your handler script. The script returned 'no rows'. Nothing in that signifies "404 page not found" - the page WAS found.

Instead, I favor divorcing the HTTP layer from the status of your server-side operations. Instead of simply returning some text in a json string, I always return a JSON data structure which encapsulates request status and request results.

e.g. in PHP you'd have

$results = array(
   'error' => false,
   'error_msg' => 'Everything A-OK',
   'data' => array(....results of request here ...)
);
echo json_encode($results);

Then in your client-side code you'd have

if (!data.error) {
   ... got data, do something with it ...
} else {
   ... invoke error handler ...
}

Just so you know, you can use this for debugging. It helped me a lot, and still does

error:function(x,e) {
    if (x.status==0) {
        alert('You are offline!!\n Please Check Your Network.');
    } else if(x.status==404) {
        alert('Requested URL not found.');
    } else if(x.status==500) {
        alert('Internel Server Error.');
    } else if(e=='parsererror') {
        alert('Error.\nParsing JSON Request failed.');
    } else if(e=='timeout'){
        alert('Request Time out.');
    } else {
        alert('Unknow Error.\n'+x.responseText);
    }
}

You need to provide the right content type if you're using JSON dataType. Before echo-ing the json, put the correct header.

<?php    
    header('Content-type: application/json');
    echo json_encode($response_array);
?>

Additional fix, you should check whether the query succeed or not.

if(mysql_query($query)){
    $response_array['status'] = 'success';  
}else {
    $response_array['status'] = 'error';  
}

On the client side:

success: function(data) {
    if(data.status == 'success'){
        alert("Thank you for subscribing!");
    }else if(data.status == 'error'){
        alert("Error on query!");
    }
},

Hope it helps.