Javascript – ajax post to SharePoint web services interrupted by ntlm challenges

Yes, this is related to the double hop issue.
In NTLM, you are not allowed to authenticate to remote services. As you said, you'll need Kerberos to delegate credentials to other services.

Options you may try:

• Switch to Kerberos. This is the only correct solution, but it's not so easy as you'll have to create all SPN and be sure port 88 is open.
• Install you're ASP.Net application in the SharePoint box and activate DisableLoopbackCheck
• Use a service account to log in to SharePoint. In this case, SharePoint won't run under the user account, so you'll have to handle security yourself

Basic usage of .ajax would look something like this:

HTML:

<form id="foo">
    <label for="bar">A bar</label>
    <input id="bar" name="bar" type="text" value="" />

    <input type="submit" value="Send" />
</form>

jQuery:

// Variable to hold request
var request;

// Bind to the submit event of our form
$("#foo").submit(function(event){

    // Prevent default posting of form - put here to work in case of errors
    event.preventDefault();

    // Abort any pending request
    if (request) {
        request.abort();
    }
    // setup some local variables
    var $form = $(this);

    // Let's select and cache all the fields
    var $inputs = $form.find("input, select, button, textarea");

    // Serialize the data in the form
    var serializedData = $form.serialize();

    // Let's disable the inputs for the duration of the Ajax request.
    // Note: we disable elements AFTER the form data has been serialized.
    // Disabled form elements will not be serialized.
    $inputs.prop("disabled", true);

    // Fire off the request to /form.php
    request = $.ajax({
        url: "/form.php",
        type: "post",
        data: serializedData
    });

    // Callback handler that will be called on success
    request.done(function (response, textStatus, jqXHR){
        // Log a message to the console
        console.log("Hooray, it worked!");
    });

    // Callback handler that will be called on failure
    request.fail(function (jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown){
        // Log the error to the console
        console.error(
            "The following error occurred: "+
            textStatus, errorThrown
        );
    });

    // Callback handler that will be called regardless
    // if the request failed or succeeded
    request.always(function () {
        // Reenable the inputs
        $inputs.prop("disabled", false);
    });

});

Note: Since jQuery 1.8, .success(), .error() and .complete() are deprecated in favor of .done(), .fail() and .always().

Note: Remember that the above snippet has to be done after DOM ready, so you should put it inside a $(document).ready() handler (or use the $() shorthand).

Tip: You can chain the callback handlers like this: $.ajax().done().fail().always();

PHP (that is, form.php):

// You can access the values posted by jQuery.ajax
// through the global variable $_POST, like this:
$bar = isset($_POST['bar']) ? $_POST['bar'] : null;

Note: Always sanitize posted data, to prevent injections and other malicious code.

You could also use the shorthand .post in place of .ajax in the above JavaScript code:

$.post('/form.php', serializedData, function(response) {
    // Log the response to the console
    console.log("Response: "+response);
});

Note: The above JavaScript code is made to work with jQuery 1.8 and later, but it should work with previous versions down to jQuery 1.5.