CakeFest Conference 2014 - Mark Scherer (@dereuromark) 

Using CakePHP for 6+ years (starting with 1.2) Core Developer since 2+ years Active blogger about CakePHP issues and solutions Germany (Berlin) Passionate PHP and Open Source Developer 

What is AJAX When to use it Basics Using GET Using POST More examples Tips 

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Load the whole page once. Then fetch only parts or tiny snippets of updates via follow-up requests. Only needs a fraction of the resource/bandwith. 

Data exchange without changing position Inline editing Real time validation Native look and feel Pre-fetching Data lookups ... 

SEO / Crawling Browser History Bookmarking Network issues Polling Same Origin Policy 

GET requests should be used only to retrieve data 

/controller/action text/html /controller/action.json application/json URL should match the expected format 

// Config/routes.php Router::parseExtensions(); Router::setExtensions(array('json', 'xml', 'csv', 'rss', 'pdf')); // AppController.php public $components = array('RequestHandler'); 

if ($this->request->is(array('ajax'))) {} $this->request->allowMethod('ajax'); 

/** * AJAX action to get favorites * * @return string */ public function favorites() { $this->autoRender = false; // We don't render a view in this example $this->request->allowMethod(array('ajax')); // No direct access via browser URL $data = array( 'content' => ..., 'error' => '', ); $this->response->body(json_encode($data)); } GET /controller_name/favorites.json 

/** * AJAX action to get favorites * * @return void */ public function favorites() { $this->request->allowMethod(array('ajax')); // No direct access via browser URL $data = array( 'content' => ..., 'error' => '', ); $this->set(compact('data')); // Pass $data to the view $this->set('_serialize', 'data'); // Let the JsonView class know what variable to use } 

Click me

Result:



$(function() { $('.ajax-button').click(function(e) { var targeturl = $(this).data('url'); $.ajax({ type: "get", url: targeturl, beforeSend: function(xhr) { xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'); }, success: function(res) { if (res.error != '') { alert(res.error); } else { $('#target').html(res.content); } }, error: function(e) { alert("Fehler bei der Anfrage!"); console.log(e); } }); }); }); 

$_ENV['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH'] = 'XMLHttpRequest'; $url = Router::url(array( 'controller' => 'controller_name', 'action' => 'favorites', 'ext' => 'json', '?' => array('id' => 2) )); $options = array( 'return' => 'vars' ); $result = $this->testAction($url, $options); ... Makes sure $this->request->allowMethod(array('ajax')); passes 

... data: {'one' : $('#one').val(), 'two' : $('#two').val()}, ... $one = $this->request->data('one'); $two = $this->request->data('two'); 

$_ENV['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH'] = 'XMLHttpRequest'; $url = Router::url(array( 'controller' => 'controller_name', 'action' => 'favorites', 'ext' => 'json', '?' => array('id' => 2) )); $options = array( 'data' => array(...), 'method' => 'post' 'return' => 'vars' ); $result = $this->testAction($url, $options); ... 'data' array with method type 'post' 

Toggle Autocomplete Chained dropdowns Pagination 

// AppController.php - e.g. in beforeRender() if ($this->request->is('ajax')) { $this->response->disableCache(); } 

Questions? 

http://book.cakephp.org https://github.com/dereuromark/cakefest2014-app http://sandbox.dereuromark.de/sandbox/ajax_examples http://sandbox.dereuromark.de/sandbox/jquery_examples/ autocomplete http://www.dereuromark.de/2014/01/09/ajax-and- cakephp/ https://github.com/dereuromark/tools