CakePHP and jQuery - Unobtrusive actions

Question

I'm trying to make an unobtrusive action for deleting bookmarks in CakePHP. Allthough it's working just fine, I suspect there must be a better way to do this. Could someone please point me in the right direction?

function delete($id = null) {
  $ok = $this->Bookmark->delete($id);

  if($this->RequestHandler->isAjax()) {
    $this->autoRender = false;
    $this->autoLayout = false;
    $response = array('status' => 0, 'message' => 'Could not delete bookmark');

    if($ok) {
        $response = array('status' => 1, 'message' => 'Bookmark deleted');
    }

    $this->header('Content-Type: application/json');
    echo json_encode($response);
    exit();
  }
  // Request isn't AJAX, redirect.
  $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
}

Answer 1

If you're planning to use AJAX action calls more extensively, it may be worthwhile to go the "overkill" route, rather than the "inelegant" route. The following method configures your application to handle AJAX requests quite gracefully.

In routes.php, add:

Router::parseExtensions('json');

Create a new directory json in app/views/layouts/, and a new layout default.ctp in the new directory:

<?php
    header("Pragma: no-cache");
    header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, max-age=0, must-revalidate");
    header('Content-Type: text/x-json');
    header("X-JSON: ".$content_for_layout);

    echo $content_for_layout;
?>

Create a new directory json in app/views/bookmarks/, and a new view delete.ctp in the new directory:

<?php
    $response = $ok
        ? array( 'status'=>1, 'message'=>__('Bookmark deleted',true))
        : array( 'status'=>0, 'message'=>__('Could not delete bookmark',true));

    echo $javascript->object($response); // Converts an array into a JSON object.
?>

Controller:

class BookmarksController extends AppController()
{
    var $components = array('RequestHandler');

    function beforeFilter()
    {
        parent::beforeFilter();
        $this->RequestHandler->setContent('json', 'text/x-json');
    }
    function delete( $id )
    {
        $ok = $this->Bookmark->del($id);
        $this->set( compact($ok));

        if (! $this->RequestHandler->isAjax())
            $this->redirect(array('action'=>'index'),303,true);
    }
}

On the pages from which the AJAX is called, you'd change the AJAX requests from /bookmarks/delete/1234 to /bookmarks/delete/1234.json.

This also make available to you the option of handling non-AJAX calls to /bookmarks/delete/1234 with an app/views/bookmarks/delete.ctp view.

Any further actions that you want to handle via AJAX and JSON, you'd add views in the app/views/bookmarks/json/ directory.