Zend Framework 2: Auto disable layout for ajax calls

Question

An AJAX request to one of my controller actions currently returns the full page HTML.

I only want it to return the HTML (.phtml contents) for that particular action.

Answer 1

public function myAjaxAction() 
{
    ....
    // View - stuff that you returning usually in a case of non-ajax requests
    View->setTerminal(true);
    return View;
}

Answer 2

Here's the best solution (in my humble opinion). I've spent almost two days to figure it out. No one on the Internet posted about it so far I think.

public function onBootstrap(MvcEvent $e)
{
    $eventManager= $e->getApplication()->getEventManager();

    // The next two lines are from the Zend Skeleton Application found on git
    $moduleRouteListener = new ModuleRouteListener();
    $moduleRouteListener->attach($eventManager);

    // Hybrid view for ajax calls (disable layout for xmlHttpRequests)
    $eventManager->getSharedManager()->attach('Zend\Mvc\Controller\AbstractController', MvcEvent::EVENT_DISPATCH, function(MvcEvent $event){

        /**
         * @var Request $request
         */
        $request = $event->getRequest();
        $viewModel = $event->getResult();

        if($request->isXmlHttpRequest()) {
            $viewModel->setTerminal(true);
        }

        return $viewModel;
    }, -95);

}

I'm still not satisfied though. I would create a plugin as a listener and configure it via configuration file instead of onBootstrap method. But I'll let this for the next time =P

Answer 3

Indeed the best thing would be to write another Strategy. There is a JsonStrategy which can auto-detect the accept header to automatically return Json-Format, but as with Ajax-Calls for fullpages, there it's good that it doesn't automatically do things, because you MAY want to get a full page. Above mentioned solution you mentioned would be the quick way to go.

When going for full speed, you'd only have one additional line. It's a best practice to always return fully qualified ViewModels from within your controller. Like:

public function indexAction() 
{
    $request   = $this->getRequest();
    $viewModel = new ViewModel();
    $viewModel->setTemplate('module/controller/action');
    $viewModel->setTerminal($request->isXmlHttpRequest());

    return $viewModel->setVariables(array(
         //list of vars
    ));
}

Answer 4

aimfeld solution works for me, but in case some of you experiment issues with the location of the template, try to specify the module:

 $this->viewModel->setTemplate('application/ajax/response');

Answer 5

The best is to use JsonModel which returns nice json and disable layout&view for you.

public function ajaxCallAction()
    {
        return new JsonModel(
            [
                'success' => true
            ]
        );
    }

Answer 6

I think the problem is that you're calling setTerminal() on the view model $e->getViewModel() that is responsible for rendering the layout, not the action. You'll have to create a new view model, call setTerminal(true), and return it. I use a dedicated ajax controller so there's no need of determining whether the action is ajax or not:

use Zend\View\Model\ViewModel;
use Zend\Mvc\MvcEvent;
use Zend\Mvc\Controller\AbstractActionController;

class AjaxController extends AbstractActionController
{
    protected $viewModel;

    public function onDispatch(MvcEvent $mvcEvent)
    {
        $this->viewModel = new ViewModel; // Don't use $mvcEvent->getViewModel()!
        $this->viewModel->setTemplate('ajax/response');
        $this->viewModel->setTerminal(true); // Layout won't be rendered

        return parent::onDispatch($mvcEvent);
    }

    public function someAjaxAction()
    {
        $this->viewModel->setVariable('response', 'success');

        return $this->viewModel;
    }
}

and in ajax/response.phtml simply the following:

<?= $this->response ?>