PHP not returning Ajax Call

I’m trying to send over the data from my textarea using an ajax call to my PHP file, but we aren’t getting any response back from the PHP file.

<textarea id="area" cols="70" rows="30"></textarea>
<button id="submit">Submit</button>

<script>
$('#submit').click(function (e) {
    e.preventDefault();

    var info = $('#area').val();
    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: 'pages/assignments/response.php',
        data: {area: info}
    });
});
</script>

<?php
    if (!empty($_POST['area'])) {
        $success = json_encode('succes');
        return $succes;
    };
?>

— # Answer # —

I thought I had already tried an echo in this piece of code, but I think I just missed the output on the webpage and thought it wasn’t working.

<?php
    if (!empty($_POST['area'])) {
        echo "success";
    };
?>

Answer

Thanks Mickael for the answer!

I completely forgot to add an echo to my code.

<?php
    if (!empty($_POST['area'])) {
        $succes = json_encode('succes');
        echo $succes();
    };
?>