Ajax View

AjaxView extends your application's AppView, disables the layout, and wraps rendered HTML in JSON. It looks for templates under an ajax subdirectory, for example templates/Items/ajax/index.php. Put shared markup in an element if you want both your normal template and the AJAX template to render it.

Select the view

The component selects it when its configured detectors match. To select it manually inside a controller action:

$this->viewBuilder()->setClassName('Ajax.Ajax');

A .json extension is optional. If using it, register the extension as described in Installation; routing alone does not select this view.

Include response fields

$this->set('content', ['id' => 1, 'title' => 'Example']);
$this->set('success', true);
$this->viewBuilder()->setOption('serialize', ['content']);

This produces:

{
    "error": null,
    "success": true,
    "content": {"id": 1, "title": "Example"}
}

Without success or error, the view attempts template rendering. Use success for a response that needs no template. serialize: true includes all view variables except the reserved configuration variables serialize, _jsonOptions, and _jsonp. A list includes only its selected variables in addition to the base response keys. Legacy $this->set('serialize', ...) remains supported; the view option takes precedence when both are configured.

Business errors

$this->set('error', 'The record cannot be changed.');

This skips the template and sets the response's error value. Set an HTTP status explicitly if your client should treat this as an HTTP failure:

$this->setResponse($this->getResponse()->withStatus(422));

The view does not turn exceptions into JSON error responses. Use your application's error middleware for exception handling.

Custom view and helpers

namespace App\View;

use Ajax\View\AjaxView as PluginAjaxView;

class AjaxView extends PluginAjaxView {
    public function initialize(): void {
        parent::initialize();
        $this->loadHelper('MyPlugin.MyHelper');
    }
}

Select your view using $this->viewBuilder()->setClassName('Ajax'), or configure the component with ['viewClass' => 'Ajax'].

JSON encoding uses AjaxView::JSON_OPTIONS. Override that constant in a subclass if needed. _jsonOptions and _jsonp view variables do not configure encoding or JSONP in this implementation.