admin ajax php success returns 0

Question

I have looked over many posts on here and other websites and nothing I do seems to work.

What I am doing is, I have a custom template file and inside that file I have a div that I want to populate using jquery ajax. The problem is that the response is always 0.

Note: I have used this code before in a plugin and not a template file and it worked the way it was supposed to. This makes me wonder if the add_action code isn't working right.

<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
jQuery.ajax({
    type : "post",
    dataType : "html",
    url : "<?php echo site_url(); ?>/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php",
    data : {action : "tw_pages_results", 'page':0, 'itemsperpage':<?php echo $item_per_page; ?>, nonce: "<?php echo $tw_pages_nonce; ?>"},
    success: function(response) {
        jQuery("#results").html(response);
        jQuery("#1-page").addClass('active');
    }
});
});
</script>

tw_page.php

This is just the beginning part of the function in the file loaded by the ajax.

add_action("wp_ajax_tw_pages_results", "tw_pages_results");
add_action("wp_ajax_nopriv_tw_pages_results", "tw_pages_results");

function tw_pages_results() {
    if ( !wp_verify_nonce( $_POST['nonce'], "tw_pages_nonce")) {
      exit("No naughty business please");
    }   

tw_pages_results.php

Answer 1

Add die(); to the end of the function handle ajax. Add return false; after jQuery.ajax

function tw_pages_results() {
    //stuff
    die(); }

jQuery(document).ready(function() {
jQuery.ajax({
    type : "post",
    dataType : "html",
    url : "<?php echo site_url(); ?>/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php",
    data : {action : "tw_pages_results", 'page':0, 'itemsperpage':<?php echo $item_per_page; ?>, nonce: "<?php echo $tw_pages_nonce; ?>"},
    success: function(response) {
        jQuery("#results").html(response);
        jQuery("#1-page").addClass('active');
    }
});
return false;
});

Answer 2

For anyone that may come across this issue, my problem was that I included the tw_pages_results.php file inside the template file. This will not work. So I moved my include to my function.php file and it started working.