I am at my wit's end and I'm hoping someone can help.

I have been trying to get AJAX to work on a local server, but I don't know where to begin even with the most basic code. I have downloaded node.js and XAMPP and I have been looking online for tutorials on how to get even AJAX test sites to work.

If anybody knows of a step-by-step tutorial on how to get the most basic AJAX functions to work on node.js or XAMPP I would appreciate it so much. Everything I've found seems to assume the person reading already knows how to begin working with a local server to make the code work. I know what code I need to write from all the examples, I just don't know how to get it to work on XAMPP or node.js! Thank you.