Basic structure for developing with jQuery and Ajax in MVC (PHP) - php

Question

I was hoping someone could share some advice on the file structure a mobile app with jQuery Mobile, Ajax and PHP.
I am pretty new to Ajax and I am struggling to integrate it into my MVC framework.
I have my Models, Views and Controller files and normally I would simply use my Controllers to feed my Views with the data from the Models.
However, when using Ajax, I understand that you can not POST (or GET) data to a specific function in a Controller directly. (Please correct me if I am wrong)
What is the best practice here?
Create a specific Ajax Controller with no functions?
Have a separate "connecting" php-file and post the Ajax call to that file which then calls the Controller files and retrieves the data.
Any ideas and maybe even some sample code would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Here is an example how you do it with Yii framework.
This is your ajax class 'AjaxController.php':
class UserController extends Controller
{
/**
* Specifies the access control rules.
* This method is used by the 'accessControl' filter.
*
* #return array access control rules
*/
public function accessRules()
{
return array(
array('allow',
'actions' => array('foo', 'bar'),
'users' => array('?'),
),
array('allow',
'actions' => array('foo', 'bar'),
'users' => array('*'),
),
array('allow',
'actions' => array('foo', 'bar','regform'),
'users' => array('#'),
),
array('deny', // deny all users
'users' => array('*'),
),
);
}
// [...] all the common Yii Controller functions
public function actionRegform()
{
//get some data from database
$data = Yii::app()->db->createCommand('some sql')->queryRow();
//or render a view
$this->render('regform', array('mydata' => $dataFromDb));
//push out everything you want
echo 'my function was called!';
}
}
In your javascript you just call the url /ajax/regform and your MVC will know that ajax is the controller and actionRegform the function you are calling.
Do not forget to implement your function to the access rules of this controller.

Answer 2

The fact that You are using AJAX doesn't change much, the simplest way to use AJAX on your site is to put an extra POST (try not to use GET) parameter with will help You to determine if this is AJAX request. It can be just ajax=1. Then You can make a seperate view to show only those things that should be shown by ajax. this can be done on every components separately, or just in Your main index.php (or whatever your mine view file is called). In this file give some code like this:
if( ( isset($_POST['ajax']) ) and ( $_POST['ajax'] == 1 ) ){
echo just_main_content();// or $component->content - whatever You use
}else{
//normal page code
}
I believe that this is the easiest way