var searchUser = function(searchQuery){    var request = $.ajax({        url:search.php,        type: POST,        data: { search:searchQuery},        success: function(reply){            $(#search-box).css(display, block);            $(#search-box).html(reply);        }    });}I know this is a terrible way of doing it, right? How else would I best go about outputting the search result to my #search-box? Right now, I send an AJAX request to my search.php file which returns all the HTML of the search. Surely this wouldn't be good from a performance perspective?
Search suggestion box with jQuery and AJAX
javascript;jquery;ajax
You should ensure your spacing is consistent.Since you're using a function expression rather than a declaration, you should terminate the line with a semicolon.You aren't making any use of the request variable, so why even declare it?You aren't taking advantage of method chaining. This is causing you to construct two jQuery objects for #search-box when you only need one.You're right in that this is not the best way to handle it; consider returning JSON or XML.You have a success callback but not an error callback. In this particular case I don't imagine it would be too bad (your search box will just remain hidden, presumably), but you may want to add one anyway.Here's how I think your code could look.var searchUser = function(searchQuery) {    $.ajax({        url: search.php,        type: POST,        data: { search: searchQuery },        dataType: json,        success: function(response) {            var resultList = response.reduce(function(accumulator, value) {                return accumulator + <li> + value + </li>;            }, <ul>);/* alternative for older browsers:            var resultList = <ul>;            $.each(response, function(index, element) {                resultList += <li> + element + </li>;            });*/            resultList += </ul>;            $(#search-box).html(resultList).show();        },        error: function() {            $(#search-box).html(An error occurred. Search suggestions could not be loaded.);        }    });};search.php would then have to do something like:$results = array(suggest, suggestion, suggested, suggesting);die(json_encode($results));