using ajax to add table row

I am trying to add new rows to a table using ajax. I have the following javascript function for adding the row, but I need to get the data for the cells using AJAX (instead of the static 'data1-9)':

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function addOrderLine(){
  var tbl = document.getElementById('mytable');
 var lastRow = tbl.rows.length;
 var row = tbl.insertRow(lastRow);
 arr= new Array('data1','data2','data3','data4','data5','data6','data7','data8','data9');
 for (r = 0; r < arr.length; r++) {   
  var cell = row.insertCell(r);
  cell.innerHTML = arr[r];
 }
}

I need data1-9 to be more complicated. I need the cells to contain various html elments including dynamically generated dropdown menus.

eg

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arr= new Array('<select name=\"select\"><option value=\"val1\">val1</option><option value="val2">val2</option></select>', 'data2', etc. );

...but only more complicated, and with serverside generated options.

I am hoping to run some ajax to get the HTML for each cell but I'm not sure how to get the html for each cell seperately...

I'm quite new to AJAX, but so far it seems to me that I have basically two options when getting data: 1) return HTML 2) return XML.

If I return HTML, I can just dump this into the cell with as many bells and whistles as I like. However, I can't work out how I would seperate the data for each of the cells unless I do 9 seperate http requests to 9 seperate pages for the 9 seperate cells.

If I return XML, I can seperate data for each of the cells by using seperate xml tags, however, I can't just dump html inside the XML elements because it will mess up the xml. Does this mean that I have to have seperate xml tags for every bit of data in the html (eg seperate xml tags for every option in the dropdown)? Isn't it gonna be a bit messy trying to convert all these xml tags to create the HTML...

I'm sure there must be a simple answer, but because I'm a bit new to AJAX, I'm not aware of all the options.

Any thoughts or things that I can look into are welcome. Thanks!

Sorry - cant help - Always thought Ajax was a football team!

hahaha...lol

Haha

Google is your friend: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/remote-scripting-ajax