Question

I have set up REST for my CakePHP and I’m having a slight problem. When calling a GET method, like view or index on my controller, or even a custom method that is GET I have no problem getting an answer. But when I try to do a POST action like add I get no output from the operation even though I can see that it reached it correctly and executed (saved to the DB).

I have properly set up the layout file for JSON and XML output as well as the routing and the view for each output type.

EDIT:

Relevant code in beforeFilter in AppController:

      if ( $this->RequestHandler->isAjax() ) {
        $this->layout = 'ajax';
        $this->autoRender = false;
      } elseif  ($this->RequestHandler->isXml()) {
        $this->layout = 'default'; 
        $this->RequestHandler->respondAs('xml');
        $this->RequestHandler->renderAs($this, 'xml');
      } elseif ($this->RequestHandler->ext == 'json') { 
        $this->layout = 'default';
        $this->RequestHandler->respondAs('json');
        $this->RequestHandler->renderAs($this, 'json');
      } elseif ($this->RequestHandler->accepts('html')) {
        $this->layout = 'frontend'; 
      }

Code in Routes:

Router::mapResources('fonykers');
Router::mapResources('voicenotes');
Router::parseExtensions();

Relevant code in my add method in FonykersController:

$response = array('ok' => true, 'title' => 'Thank you for registering', 'msg' => 'A confirmation email has been sent to the provided email address, please click on the link in the email to complete the registration process');
if ($this->RequestHandler->isXml()) {
  $this->set(compact('response'));
} else if ($this->RequestHandler->ext == 'json') {
  pr('This prints');
  $this->set(compact('response')); //View not being outputted
  pr('This also prints');
} else {
  echo json_encode($response); 
} 

My view in /views/fonykers/json

<?php echo json_encode(array('response' => $response)); ?>

My layout file for json:

<?php 
header("Pragma: no-cache"); 
header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, max-age=0, must-revalidate"); 
header('Content-Type: application/json'); 
header("X-JSON: ".$content_for_layout); 
echo $content_for_layout; 
?>

Answer 1

You have a few things going on…

Your beforeFilter checks for isAjax and then uses elseif to test for XML or JSON. If your request is AJAX, it will never get to the XML/JSON tests. Your layout is likely not being set at all which leaves you with just $this->autoRender = false;.

Since autoRender is disabled, at some point you’ll have to manually invoke rendering. Using $this->set() just prepares variables for usage in your view – it doesn’t actually output the view. In your controller action, the only line that would actually output anything is echo json_encode($response);.

Use $this->render() to force Cake to render the view when you want it to. More info in The 1.3 Book: Rendering a specific view

---

As an aside, sometimes you use ...}elseif(... and sometimes you use ...}else if(.... This isn’t technically wrong, but being consistent will make your code easier to read.