Question

I have a jQuery function that gets data from a form and puts it as a string (for now) into an #content.

$(document).ready(function() {

    $('form').submit(function() {
        var results = $(this).serialize();
        var url = '<php? echo JURI::base(); ?>index.php?option=com_mls&task=ListData&' + results;
        $('#content').html(url);
        return false;
    });
});

So, I know how to build the query string from the form.

I have a task in my controller that runs a mySQL query string from the URL.

function ListData()
{
    error_reporting(E_ALL);
    $db =& JFactory::getDBO();
    $sort = JRequest::getVar('sort');

        ...some other stuff...

    $query = [some big nasty thing]        

    $db->setQuery($query);
    $array = $db->loadRowList();

    return $array;
}

So I know how to query the mySQL DB and get an array().

Then, I have a PHP script that pulls the array data into HTML format:

<?php 

    $array = $this->disparray;

    foreach($array as $key => $value){
        $mlsnum = $value['1'];
            ...some other data gets....
        echo '<div>' . $mlsnum . '</div>';
    }
?>

Here’s where I’m stuck. I don’t know how to get the URL query from jQuery to the controller task and then get the array() returned by that task into the PHP script which would build the HTML and then get AJAX/jQuery to put that data into #content.

Answer 1

Action is going on in 3 steps.
First ajax call view.raw.php then you load/add/delete some data from model, and customize it as you want. Then you print it in JSON format – send it back to ajax, and then ajax put that into html.

$(document).ready(function() {
    var url = '<php? echo JURI::base(); ?>index.php?option=com_mls&task=ListData&format=raw&' + results;
    $.ajax({
        url: url,
        dataType: 'json',
        success: function(json) {

            if (json['output']) {
                $('#content').html(json['output']);
            }

            if (json['redirect']) {
                location = json['redirect'];
            }
        }
    });
});

this will communicate with
/com_mls/(default_view)/view.raw.php

in there, you should probably do something like

class mlsView_your_view... extends JView
{
    public function display($tpl = null) {

        $task = JRequest::getCmd('task', 0);
        // see what should we do now
        switch( $task ){
            case 'ListData':
                $data = $this->get_data();
            break;
        }

        // Get the document object.
        $document = JFactory::getDocument();

        // Set the MIME type for JSON output.
        $document->setMimeEncoding('application/json');

        // Change the suggested filename.
        //JResponse::setHeader('Content-Disposition','attachment;filename="resp.json"');

        // Output the JSON data.
        echo json_encode($data);
    }

    function get_data() {

        // load model
        $model = $this->getModel('ajax');

        // get data from model
        $data = $model->getSomeData();

        if( is_null($data) ){
            return array( 'error' => 'missing data.');
        }

        $data['output'] = $model->prepareData($data);

        return array( $data );
    }

….etc….
}