Yii, Is it good MVC practice to echo in the controller? - php

Question

It seems like i am not following the MVC design structure.
I'm making an ajax call from my view to a Controller function
Controller
public function actionGetClient()
{
$user = Client::model()->findByAttributes(array('email'=>$_POST['email'], 'password'=>$_POST['pass']));
echo $user->fullname;
}
View (the calling ajax)
CHtml::ajaxLink(
$text = 'get user',
$url = Yii::app()->createUrl('[my controller]/getClient'),
$ajax=array (
'type'=>'POST',
'data' => array('email'=>email, 'pass'=>pass),
'beforeSend' => "function( request )
{
$(\".result\").html(\"fetching...\")
}",
'success'=>"function(data){
$(\".result\").html(\"user is :\"+data)
}
"
));
Is it good to "echo" the $user->fullname inside the controller for the ajax success function to display it? My boss doesn't like it when i print stuff in my controller, how can i approach this
because when i use return instead, the ajax success gets a null value
return $user->fullname;

Answer 1

No,
It's not a good practice.
You need to create a view to use echo.
You can use return $this->renderPartial('VIEW_NAME'); to render a view without Layout.

Answer 2

You should write 'return' instead of 'echo'. 'echo' is not a good practice for ajax response. You don't need to make a new view for just return a name in your case.
public function actionGetClient()
{
$user = Client::model()->findByAttributes(array('email'=>$_POST['email'],'password'=>$_POST['pass']));
return $user->fullname;
}

Answer 3

No. A controller’s supposed to pass its results to a view for rendering.

Answer 4

I would avoid echoing in the controller what we usually do is have a ajax view folder and a json view and render with that so:
public function actionGetClient()
{
$user = Client::model()->findByAttributes(array(
'email'=>$_POST['email'],
'password'=>$_POST['pass']
));
$this->render("json",array("outputData"=>$user));
}
then add this to the controller as well:
public function getViewPath(){
if(Yii::app()->request->isAjaxRequest){
if(($module=$this->getModule())===null)
$module=Yii::app();
return $module->getViewPath().DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR."ajax";
}
return parent::getViewPath();
}
and in the ajax views folder add a json.php file like so
header('Content-Type: application/json');
// output data
echo json_encode($outputData);
please degug the code as I wrote it free hand. You can also set a marker in the controller like $viewPath and set it before the rendering