Grails “render” renders the template

Question

In my Grails controller I\'m responding to an AJAX call and using render to return the text:

def ajaxRandomPersonName = {
    def person = get a ran         


        

Answer 1

Make your client side javascript code handle a JSON respond and render your response with:

render [text:"Name: ${person.name}"] as JSON

Answer 2

Resolved: Adding contentType results in the template not being rendered:

render text: "Name: ${person.name}", contentType: "text/plain"

Answer 3

You might be getting burnt by the 'layout-by-convention' feature in Grails. If your layout name matches the controller name prefix, for example, Grails will apply the layout to every view managed by that controller. Unfortunately, it even applies to text and templates. There are currently a few JIRAs logged regarding this (see http://jira.grails.org/browse/GRAILS-7624 for example). I got burnt by this today. I resolved it by simply renaming my layout gsp such that it doesn't match any controller name. My layout was initially named 'storefront.gsp' and I have a controller named StorefrontController. I renamed the layout to 'public.gsp'.

Answer 4

We've found that explicitly returning false from the action fixes this.

I believe doing render foo as JSON returns false implicitly.