HTML code: <head> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> function get_json() { $.post('json.php', function(data) { var resp = eval('(' + data + ')'); var msg = resp.fruits; console.log(msg); alert(msg.letter+': '+msg.name); }); } </script> </head> <body> <div style="margin:10px;" align="left"> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="get_json();">Get Json response</a> </div> </body> PHP code: <?php echo json_encode(array('fruits'=>array('letter'=>'a', 'name'=>'apple'))); ?>