After spending the last 45 minutes looking around for a solution, I can't seem to find an easy solution to creating a countdown timer using PHP and jQuery. Most already built scripts I've found are based purely on jQuery which require a ton of code, and more parameters then they should, plus, adaptability is pretty hard.

Here's my situation;

PHP:

$countdown = date(h:i:s); // This isn't my actual $countdown variable, just a placeholder

jQuery:

$(document).ready(function name() {

    $(#this).load( function() {  

        setTimeout(name(), 1000)

      }

    }

});

HTML:

<div id=this><?php echo($countdown); ?></div>

My idea is that, every second, #this is reloaded, giving a new value to it's contents, and as $countdown isn't a static variable, a new value will be loaded each time. This removes the need to deal with sessions (as a basic javascript countdown timer would reset on pageload, etc).

I would've though this would have worked, until I realized that the event binder .load() doesn't reload #this (I know silly me), so I guess what I'm wondering is - is there an event binder I can use to make this work or is there a way to get the functionality I'm looking for, without using a jQuery plugin (which doesn't match exactly what I want anyway)?