jQuery Forum

I have a PHP page that has a button to Delete a customer.  The button code uses $.ajax to call the page that "deletes" the customer and returns a JSON object on success or failure.  The problem is the JSON response includes html from my two includes.  Here is the code from the main page:

1.             $("#btnDelete").click(function(){
                   if (confirm("Are you sure you want to delete this customer and ALL their records?")) {
                       $.ajax({
                           type: "POST",
                           url: "/includes/delete_customer.php",
                           data: "cust_id=<?php echo $custno; ?>",
                           dataType : "json",
                           success: function(msg){
                               alert("Success: " + msg);
                           },
                           error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown){
                               alert("Failure: " + errorThrown);
                           }
                       });
                       top.location = "/pages/edit_customer_list.php";
                   }
               });
   
   

Here is the code from the called page:

1. <?php
       header("Content-type: application/json");
       include_once($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]."/includes/main.php");
       include_once($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]."/includes/dbconnect.php");
       // Don't actually delete, just mark as inactive
       $query = "UPDATE customers SET active=FALSE WHERE id=".$_POST["cust_id"];
       $result = mysql_query($query);
       if ($result) {
            $return['success'] = true;
            $return['error'] = false;
            $return['msg'] = "This customer has been successfully deleted.";
       } else {
            $return['success'] = false;
            $return['error'] = true;
            $return['msg'] = mysql_error();
       }
       mysql_free_result($result);
       echo json_encode($return);
   ?>
   

I added the header code but that didn't help.  The json response includes the code from the two include file and I can't figure out why or how to get rid of it.

Also, am I indicating success/failure the correct way?  I wonder because I don't know how my calling program knows to process the error function.  What is the correct way to indicate an error or failure?