Cakephp3: How can I return json data?

Question

I am having a ajax post call to a cakePhp Controller:

$.ajax({
                type: \"POST\",
                url: \'locations/add\',
                data: {
           


        

Answer 1

As of cakePHP 4.x.x the following should work assuming that your controller and routes are set as shown below: controller: <your_project_name>/src/Controller/StudentsController.php

public function index()
    {
        $students = $this->Students->find('all');
        $this->set(compact('students'));
        $this->viewBuilder()->setOption('serialize',['students']);
    }

Routes: <your_project_name>/config/routes.php

<?php

use Cake\Routing\Route\DashedRoute;
use Cake\Routing\RouteBuilder;

/** @var \Cake\Routing\RouteBuilder $routes */
$routes->setRouteClass(DashedRoute::class);

$routes->scope('/', function (RouteBuilder $builder) {
 
    $builder->setExtensions(['json']);
    $builder->resources('Students');
    $builder->fallbacks();
});

Run bin/cake server and visit http://localhost:8765/students.json using postman/insomnia or just the normal browser. See further documentation for setting up Restful controllers and Restful Routing

Don't forget to set the method to GET on postman and insomnia.

Answer 2

When you return JSON data you need to define the data type and response body information like below:

$cardInformation = json_encode($cardData);
$this->response->type('json');
$this->response->body($cardInformation);
return $this->response;

In you case just change this return json_encode(array('result' => 'success')); line with below code:

$responseResult = json_encode(array('result' => 'success'));
$this->response->type('json');
$this->response->body($responseResult);
return $this->response;