There is something similar as Page Methods? (Using Ajax to execute server side function)

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Javascript

PHP

Ajax

Hello people.

I used ASP.NET AJAX to do something like this:

html button:
<button onclick="writeSomething();">

and then with JS
PageMethods.writeSomething(something);

and then on serverside:

[WebMethod]
   public static void writeSomething(string something)

This is pretty usefull. I would like to know how could I to the same with PHP as server side language. I know PHP is a pure server side language, I've seen some solutions with jQuery and some frameworks, but I'm wondering if I can do that other way.

Thank you very much.