help with jquery server responds with whole page

[caleb momanyi]

What's up fellow ranchers. pretty rough day out in the fields for for me. I have started learning jquery and am trying to get a string from the server but when
i do alert(response) i find that the response is the whole jsp page from the server. how can i get just the string only. i have heard of JSON and if any one of you can
help me get started will be very thankful.

get method in servlet

        ...
        if(userPath.equals("/chat")){
            request.setAttribute("response", "request successful");
            userPath = "index.jsp";
        }
        ...

jquery

        $.ajax({
            type: "GET",
            url: "chat",
            success: function(response, status){
                alert("response: "+response+"\n"+status);
            }
            
        });
        

[Bear Bibeault]

The response will contains whatever /chat returns as the response. It has nothing at all to do with what you are doing on the client. If you only want a string, then /chat has to return just that string, not a whole page.

[caleb momanyi]

thank you for your response sir. my problem is how to stop it from returning the whole page.

most of the examples I am seeing only explain the client side methods of handling the the response but not so well explanation for server side.

[Bear Bibeault]

That entirely has to do with the server-side code that's responding to the /chat url. What it it? A servlet? Something else? Whatever it is, it needs to be changed to return just what you want rather than what you do not.

[caleb momanyi]

using print writter?

[Bear Bibeault]

I have no idea. You have given us no details whatsoever on the server component.