Kohana with AJAX get request - php

Question

I am new to the world of Kohana/php and am having some issues understanding how to get the result of an ajax request. This request is being called from a click action and is invoking the following method.
function addClickHandlerAjax(marker, l){
google.maps.event.addListener(marker, "click",function(){
console.log(l.facilityId);
removeInfoWindow();
//get content via ajax
$.ajax({
url: 'map/getInfoWindow',
type: 'get',
data: {'facilityID': l.facilityId },
success: function(data, status) {
if(data == "ok") {
console.log('ok');
}
},
error: function(xhr, desc, err) {
console.log(xhr);
console.log("Details: " + desc + "\nError:" + err);
}
}); // end ajax call
});
}
Inside of my controller I have a method
public function action_getInfoWindow(){
if ($this->request->current()->method() === HTTP_Request::GET) {
$data = array(
'facility' => 'derp',
);
// JSON response
$this->auto_render = false;
$this->request->response = json_encode($data);
}
}
I see an HTTP request in fiddler and it passed the correct facilityID parameter. However I am having some disconnect about how to connect all the pieces together.

Answer 1

To send a response to the browser, you should user Controller::response instead of Controller::request::response. So your code should look like this:
public function action_getInfoWindow() {
// retrieve data
$this->response->body(json_encode($data));
}
That should give you some output.
Checkout the Documentation for more detailed info.
Edit
What you could do, to make your life a bit easier, especially if you gonna use ajax requests a lot, is to create an Ajax controller. You can stuff all checks and transforms in it, and never worry about it anymore. An example controller could look like below. Also checkout the Controller_Template which is shipped as an example by Kohana.
class Controller_Ajax extends Controller {
function before() {
if( ! $this->request->is_ajax() ) {
throw Kohana_Exception::factory(500, 'Expecting an Ajax request');
}
}
private $_content;
function content($content = null) {
if( is_null( $content ) ) {
return $this->_content;
}
$this->_content = $content;
}
function after() {
$this->response->body( json_encode( $this->_content ) );
}
}
// example usage
class Controller_Home extends Controller_Ajax {
public function action_getInfoWindow() {
// retrieve the data
$this->content( $data );
}
}