Returning HTML fragments with JsonView in CakePHP - php

Question

I'm using Cake 2.1, and with it comes the new JsonView. What I'd like to do is POST to a method in my controller and render an html fragment so that I can return it as a value in json.
Previously I'd do something like this:
public function ajaxSubmit() {
if (!$this->request->is('ajax')) {
$this->redirect('/');
} else {
$this->autoRender = $this->layout = false;
$message = 'Please enter a message';
$this->set('message');
$errorFragment = $this->render('/Elements/errors/flash_error');
$toReturn = array('errorFragment' => $errorFragment);
return json_encode($toReturn);
}
}
Which only sends back the html fragment of that particular flash_error element such that I can't have multiple key => values being sent back in a standard json object. I want to be able to send both html fragments and just plain text as json.
So my question really is, how can I render an HTML element and set it with a (key=>value pair) to be sent back as json from my controller using the JsonView that Cake 2.1 provides? I already have set in my routes file Router::parseExtensions('json'); and I'm including the RequestHandler component inside of my AppController.

Answer 1

You shouldn't need a separate action for AJAX when using data views. Use can use the same action as your non AJAX submit.
However assuming that you wish to use a different action for AJAX because I don't know what your other action looks like, you can write something like this in app/View/ControllerName/json/ajaxSubmit.ctp.
<?php
$errorFragment = $this->element('errors/flash_error');
$toReturn = array('errorFragment' => $errorFragment);
echo json_encode($toReturn);
Then change your action to this
public function ajaxSubmit() {
if (!$this->request->is('ajax')) {
$this->redirect('/');
} else {
$message = 'Please enter a message';
$this->set('message');
}
}
See "Using a data view with view files" in the documentation.