Answer by Nic for How do I return the response from an asynchronous call?

You are using Ajax incorrectly. The idea is not to have it return anything, but instead hand off the data to something called a callback function, which handles the data.

That is:

function handleData( responseData ) {    // Do what you want with the data    console.log(responseData);}$.ajax({    url: "hi.php",    ...    success: function ( data, status, XHR ) {        handleData(data);    }});

Returning anything in the submit handler will not do anything. You must instead either hand off the data, or do what you want with it directly inside the success function.