Standardizing the JSON response - php

Question

I have an application where information from the database is sent back as a JSON response.
Tailoring the jQuery side to handle each and every response seems like a lot of effort for little adaptability.
In what ways could the JSON format could be standardized ? Additionaly, is there a way to "slot in" a handler in jQuery ?
I've been thinking along the lines of something like this:
{
"replyCode": "OK"/"Error",
"replyMessage": "Operation successful"/"Could not connect",
"returnData": ... // Entities go here
}

Answer 1

Standardizing the JSON response is something that needs to be customized for each application; only you have the necessary data to decide exactly what actions should be supported and how they would be communicated over JSON.
As an example, in the past I have used both a "response sniffer" logic (where the handler checks for specific properties in the response and processes each one that exists in a specific manner) and a "command list" logic (where the response always contains an array of objects that describe specific actions that must be taken and the handler executes them) in this situation.
I don't believe that a reply code and message is necessary in most situations as the HTTP response header can communicate this information effectively.
Whatever you decide to do, .ajaxComplete (and its siblings .ajaxSuccess and .ajaxError) can be used to install global response handlers on the client side that run on completion of every request.

Answer 2

First, you should really take a look at the video RESTful API Design from the apigee guys. It contains a ton of good advice for RESTful APIs. Brian Mulloy gives also feedback on how responses should look like.
Next, you should take a look at some libs in php for developing RESTful APIs. Some of these gives you a solid way of how to return responses.
https://github.com/Respect/Rest
https://github.com/MArcJ/PHPRestService
https://github.com/kla/php-activerecord
or more https://github.com/search?q=php%20rest
With this you should good to go to build well RESTful APIs.

Answer 3

Why not have a central function that does the final echoing of the JSON as the response.
function returnJSON($code,$data=array()){
echo json_encode(
array(
'replyCode'=>$code,
'replyMessage'=>getReturnMessageByCode($code),
'returnData'=>$data
)
);
}
Now at the end of every AJAX call you make to retrieve this data, your PHP code would do something like this -
$data = fetchData();
if ($data){
returnJSON('OK',$data);
}else{
returnJSON('FAIL');
}
exit();
Standardizing your responses is a great idea and is also your responsibility. Unless your framework has other options its up to you to make your code as robust as possible.