Question

I’m working on a system (ActiveCollab) that uses Smarty for templates. I want to output some JSON so I need to have it output by itself… no other cruft. However, if I do NOT provide a Smarty template file for the corresponding action I get an error output that ruins the JSON.

Does anyone know how to disable Smarty output on a case by case basis? In pseudocode, something like

$this->smarty->disable();

Failing that, does anyone know how to have ActiveCollab not require a template file for output? Or even know of a better way to output JSON for consumption within ActiveCollab?

My main goal is to output json for use by jqgrid within ActiveCollab, in case that helps.

Thanks.

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EDIT:

It turns out it’s as simple as adding die(); after the desired output.

function bar(){
    echo $myoutput;
    die();
}

That’s it. Why I always look for the “hard” answer when the solution is so basic I will never know… sigh.

Answer 1

activeCollab will automatically render page layout around page content only if action itself did not provide an exit before it ended execution. This exit may be:

1. Serving some data with $this->serveData()
2. Page redirection
3. Simple printing of content + die()
4. File forward, using download_file() and download_content() function
5. Any other exist that stops execution of action (dies within it)

In your case, you can use controller’s serveData() method to serve JSON:

function action() {
  $my_json_data = array('something');

  $this->serveData($my_json_data, null, FORMAT_JSON);
}

This function will set proper HTTP headers and encode the value that you are sending.