Comments on: Returning JSON in a Zend Controller’s Action

By: Christof Coetzee

Christof Coetzee — Fri, 20 May 2011 11:52:13 +0000

Its not always what or how we prefer doing things, most of the time one should stick to the official methods/ways of doing stuff.

I think this is the significant different between Zend Framework and other frameworks, ZF enforces good coding practices.

If you want to “roll your own” in a variety of ways then rather use other frameworks like Codeigniter, Yii etc.

Although ZF can be extended to suit your needs 100%, a solid convention for doing this also exist – with ZF is hardly ever a case of “where the hell do I find this method” or “Why are these classes but these ones are global functions”…like in Codeigniter etc.

By: PHPGangsta

PHPGangsta — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:49:34 +0000

Please don’t use the third method (exit), because then existing postDispatch methods or -plugins are not executed!

The second solution or ContextSwitch/AjaxSwitch is the best choice.

By: Dennis Becker

Dennis Becker — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:31:37 +0000

Just use $this->getHelper(‘json’)->senJson($data) and all the headers will be correct – I dislike the ‘direct’ calls in those action helpers.

By: Marcel Anacker

Marcel Anacker — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:49:03 +0000

I prefer the json action helper:
$this->_helper->json($data);
…and you’re done.

By: Carlos Buenosvinos

Carlos Buenosvinos — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:44:02 +0000

Please, consider the most elegant one (better than these ones): ContextSwitch or AjaxContext

The ContextSwitch action helper is intended for facilitating returning different response formats on request. The AjaxContext helper is a specialized version of ContextSwitch that facilitates returning responses to XmlHttpRequests.

http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.controller.actionhelpers.html