cakephp 3.x _serialize key not working - json

I an trying to return json from a cakephp 3.1 controller function. My problem is that no matter what I do with the _serialize flag, the response is always that there is a missing view template file.
In the cake docs it says to set the _serialize flag if you do not need to use a template to format the response. Cake Docs on View _serialize
Below is the Javascript on the client side that initializes the process
function save_activity( mod, act, resp ) {
$.ajax({
method: 'POST',
url: '/activities/saveActivity',
data: {
'module' : "example1",
'activity_name' : "example2",
'response' : "example3"
},
dataType: 'json',
error: function( xhr, status, error ){
alert( status + error );
},
success: function( data, status, xhr ){
alert( status + data.success );
}
});
}
The Controller code that handles the json from the client.
public function saveActivity()
{
$user = $this->Auth->user();
//This line does not seem to do anything
//$this->request->input('json_decode', 'true');
//Debugger::log($this->request->data);
$activityTable = TableRegistry::get('Activities');
$activity = $activityTable->newEntity();
$activity->user_id = $user['id'];
$activity->module = $this->request->data('module');
$activity->activity_name = $this->request->data('activity_name');
$activity->response = $this->request->data('response');
//These lines do not have any effect
//$this->RequestHandler->renderAs($this, 'json');
//$this->response->type('application/json');
//$this->viewBuilder()->layout(null);
//$this->render(false);
$msg = '';
if ($activityTable->save($activity)) {
$msg = 'Activity Stored';
} else {
$msg = 'Activity Not Stored';
}
$this->set(['response' => $msg]);
//comment or uncomment this line and it makes no difference
//as it still returns a json response about a missing template.
$this->set('_serialize', true);
}
The error message I get when I include or remove the _serialize flag.
"Template file "Pages\json\module1\activity4.ctp" is missing."
Anyone have any insight into this mechanims? The workaround I have found is to include the template file... but this means I will have to generate a few dozen essentially empty template files to handle all the places this call is generated from.
Any help please?

Problem cause:- Violation of assumption.
My assumption was that the saveActivity method was being executed. While the reality was that AuthComponent was failing to allow access to that method and the default handler was being run instead, then the default view template was being looked for... and failing.
I found this by looking at the stack track attached to the error message in the returned page via devTools. I should also have verified this assumption with some simple trace logging calls. I already had the clue when I commented out the "$this->set('_serialize', true);" and nothing changed.
Then the simple solution was to authorise the method in the controllers beforeFilter:
public function beforeFilter(Event $event)
{
parent::beforeFilter($event);
$this->Auth->allow('saveActivity');
$this->Auth->allow('getActivity');
$this->eventManager()->off($this->Csrf);
}
Thanks for the assist ndm.

Related

Unexpected token < in JSON Content at position 0 Error [duplicate]

In a React app component which handles Facebook-like content feeds, I am running into an error:
Feed.js:94 undefined "parsererror" "SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0
I ran into a similar error which turned out to be a typo in the HTML within the render function, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
More confusingly, I rolled the code back to an earlier, known-working version and I'm still getting the error.
Feed.js:
import React from 'react';
var ThreadForm = React.createClass({
getInitialState: function () {
return {author: '',
text: '',
included: '',
victim: ''
}
},
handleAuthorChange: function (e) {
this.setState({author: e.target.value})
},
handleTextChange: function (e) {
this.setState({text: e.target.value})
},
handleIncludedChange: function (e) {
this.setState({included: e.target.value})
},
handleVictimChange: function (e) {
this.setState({victim: e.target.value})
},
handleSubmit: function (e) {
e.preventDefault()
var author = this.state.author.trim()
var text = this.state.text.trim()
var included = this.state.included.trim()
var victim = this.state.victim.trim()
if (!text || !author || !included || !victim) {
return
}
this.props.onThreadSubmit({author: author,
text: text,
included: included,
victim: victim
})
this.setState({author: '',
text: '',
included: '',
victim: ''
})
},
render: function () {
return (
<form className="threadForm" onSubmit={this.handleSubmit}>
<input
type="text"
placeholder="Your name"
value={this.state.author}
onChange={this.handleAuthorChange} />
<input
type="text"
placeholder="Say something..."
value={this.state.text}
onChange={this.handleTextChange} />
<input
type="text"
placeholder="Name your victim"
value={this.state.victim}
onChange={this.handleVictimChange} />
<input
type="text"
placeholder="Who can see?"
value={this.state.included}
onChange={this.handleIncludedChange} />
<input type="submit" value="Post" />
</form>
)
}
})
var ThreadsBox = React.createClass({
loadThreadsFromServer: function () {
$.ajax({
url: this.props.url,
dataType: 'json',
cache: false,
success: function (data) {
this.setState({data: data})
}.bind(this),
error: function (xhr, status, err) {
console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString())
}.bind(this)
})
},
handleThreadSubmit: function (thread) {
var threads = this.state.data
var newThreads = threads.concat([thread])
this.setState({data: newThreads})
$.ajax({
url: this.props.url,
dataType: 'json',
type: 'POST',
data: thread,
success: function (data) {
this.setState({data: data})
}.bind(this),
error: function (xhr, status, err) {
this.setState({data: threads})
console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString())
}.bind(this)
})
},
getInitialState: function () {
return {data: []}
},
componentDidMount: function () {
this.loadThreadsFromServer()
setInterval(this.loadThreadsFromServer, this.props.pollInterval)
},
render: function () {
return (
<div className="threadsBox">
<h1>Feed</h1>
<div>
<ThreadForm onThreadSubmit={this.handleThreadSubmit} />
</div>
</div>
)
}
})
module.exports = ThreadsBox
In Chrome developer tools, the error seems to be coming from this function:
loadThreadsFromServer: function loadThreadsFromServer() {
$.ajax({
url: this.props.url,
dataType: 'json',
cache: false,
success: function (data) {
this.setState({ data: data });
}.bind(this),
error: function (xhr, status, err) {
console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString());
}.bind(this)
});
},
with the line console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString() underlined.
Since it looks like the error seems to have something to do with pulling JSON data from the server, I tried starting from a blank db, but the error persists. The error seems to be called in an infinite loop presumably as React continuously tries to connect to the server and eventually crashes the browser.
EDIT:
I've checked the server response with Chrome dev tools and Chrome REST client, and the data appears to be proper JSON.
EDIT 2:
It appears that though the intended API endpoint is indeed returning the correct JSON data and format, React is polling http://localhost:3000/?_=1463499798727 instead of the expected http://localhost:3001/api/threads.
I am running a webpack hot-reload server on port 3000 with the express app running on port 3001 to return the backend data. What's frustrating here is that this was working correctly the last time I worked on it and can't find what I could have possibly changed to break it.
The wording of the error message corresponds to what you get from Google Chrome when you run JSON.parse('<...'). I know you said the server is setting Content-Type:application/json, but I am led to believe the response body is actually HTML.
Feed.js:94 undefined "parsererror" "SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0"
with the line console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString()) underlined.
The err was actually thrown within jQuery, and passed to you as a variable err. The reason that line is underlined is simply because that is where you are logging it.
I would suggest that you add to your logging. Looking at the actual xhr (XMLHttpRequest) properties to learn more about the response. Try adding console.warn(xhr.responseText) and you will most likely see the HTML that is being received.
You're receiving HTML (or XML) back from the server, but the dataType: json is telling jQuery to parse as JSON. Check the "Network" tab in Chrome dev tools to see contents of the server's response.
SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0
You are getting an HTML file (or XML) instead of json.
Html files begin with <!DOCTYPE html>.
I "achieved" this error by forgetting the https:// in my fetch method:
fetch(`/api.github.com/users/${login}`)
.then(response => response.json())
.then(setData);
I verified my hunch:
I logged the response as text instead of JSON.
fetch(`/api.github.com/users/${login}`)
.then(response => response.text())
.then(text => console.log(text))
.then(setData);
Yep, an html file.
Solution:
I fixed the error by adding back the https:// in my fetch method.
fetch(`https://api.github.com/users/${login}`)
.then(response => response.json())
.then(setData)
.catch(error => (console.log(error)));
This ended up being a permissions problem for me. I was trying to access a url I didn't have authorization for with cancan, so the url was switched to users/sign_in. the redirected url responds to html, not json. The first character in a html response is <.
In my case, I was getting this running webpack. It turned out to be corrupted somewhere in the local node_modules dir.
rm -rf node_modules
npm install
...was enough to get it working right again.
I experienced this error "SyntaxError: Unexpected token m in JSON at position", where the token 'm' can be any other characters.
It turned out that I missed one of the double quotes in the JSON object when I was using RESTconsole for DB test, as {"name: "math"}. The correct one should be {"name": "math"}.
It took me a lot effort to figure out this clumsy mistake. I am afraid others will run into similar issues.
This error occurs when you define the response as application/json and you are getting a HTML as a response. Basically, this happened when you are writing server side script for specific url with a response of JSON but the error format is in HTML.
Those who are using create-react-app and trying to fetch local json files.
As in create-react-app, webpack-dev-server is used to handle the request and for every request it serves the index.html. So you are getting
SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0.
To solve this, you need to eject the app and modify the webpack-dev-server configuration file.
You can follow the steps from here.
I was facing the same issue.
I removed the dataType:'json' from the $.ajax method.
In a nutshell, if you're getting this error or a similar error, that means only one thing: Someplace in our codebase, we were expecting a valid JSON format to process, and we didn't get one. For example,
var string = "some string";
JSON.parse(string)
will throw an error, saying
Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token s in JSON at position 0
Because, the first character in string is s & it's not a valid JSON now. This can throw error in between also. like:
var invalidJSON= '{"foo" : "bar", "missedquotehere : "value" }';
JSON.parse(invalidJSON)
Will throw error:
VM598:1 Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token v in JSON at position 36
because we intentionally missed a quote in the JSON string invalidJSON at position 36.
And if you fix that:
var validJSON= '{"foo" : "bar", "missedquotehere" : "value" }';
JSON.parse(validJSON)
will give you an object in JSON.
This error can be thrown in any place & in any framework/library. Most of the time you may be reading a network response which is not valid JSON. So steps of debugging this issue can be like:
curl or hit the actual API you're calling.
Log/Copy the response and try to parse it with JSON.parse. If you're getting error, fix it.
If not, make sure your code is not mutating/changing the original response.
I my case the error was a result of me not assigning my return value to a variable. The following caused the error message:
return new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize("hello");
I changed it to:
string H = "hello";
return new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize(H);
Without the variable JSON is unable to properly format the data.
For future googlers:
This message will be generated if the server-side function crashes.
Or if the server-side function doesn't even exist ( i.e. Typo in function name ).
So - suppose you are using a GET request... and everything looks perfect and you've triple-checked everything...
Check that GET string one more time. Mine was:
'/theRouteIWant&someVar=Some value to send'
should be
'/theRouteIWant?someVar=Some value to send'
^
CrAsH !       ( ... invisibly, on the server ...)
Node/Express sends back the incredibly helpful message:
Uncaught (in promise) SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0
In my case, for an Azure hosted Angular 2/4 site, my API call to mySite/api/... was redirecting due to mySite routing issues. So, it was returning the HTML from the redirected page instead of the api JSON. I added an exclusion in a web.config file for the api path.
I was not getting this error when developing locally because the Site and API were on different ports. There is probably a better way to do this ... but it worked.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<rewrite>
<rules>
<clear />
<!-- ignore static files -->
<rule name="AngularJS Conditions" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="(app/.*|css/.*|fonts/.*|assets/.*|images/.*|js/.*|api/.*)" />
<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false" />
<action type="None" />
</rule>
<!--remaining all other url's point to index.html file -->
<rule name="AngularJS Wildcard" enabled="true">
<match url="(.*)" />
<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false" />
<action type="Rewrite" url="index.html" />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>
2022 UPDATE: having written this several years ago. I'd call this suggestion more of a workaround - a direct fix. The better hosting pattern is to simply not try to host these api paths under your website path; rather, host them on separate base URLs entirely. For my use case example, the API and Web path would be entirely separate Azure Web Services and would get different URL endpoints.
My problem was that I was getting the data back in a string which was not in a proper JSON format, which I was then trying to parse it. simple example: JSON.parse('{hello there}') will give an error at h. In my case the callback url was returning an unnecessary character before the objects: employee_names([{"name":.... and was getting error at e at 0. My callback URL itself had an issue which when fixed, returned only objects.
On a general level this error occurs when a JSON object is parsed that has syntax errors in it. Think of something like this, where the message property contains unescaped double quotes:
{
"data": [{
"code": "1",
"message": "This message has "unescaped" quotes, which is a JSON syntax error."
}]
}
If you have JSON in your app somewhere then it's good to run it through JSONLint to verify that it doesn't have a syntax error. Usually this isn't the case though in my experience, it's usually JSON returned from an API that's the culprit.
When an XHR request is made to an HTTP API that returns a response with a Content-Type:application/json; charset=UTF-8 header which contains invalid JSON in the response body you'll see this error.
If a server-side API controller is improperly handling a syntax error, and it's being printed out as part of the response, that will break the structure of JSON returned. A good example of this would be an API response containing a PHP Warning or Notice in the response body:
<b>Notice</b>: Undefined variable: something in <b>/path/to/some-api-controller.php</b> on line <b>99</b><br />
{
"success": false,
"data": [{ ... }]
}
95% of the time this is the source of the issue for me, and though it's somewhat addressed here in the other responses I didn't feel it was clearly described. Hopefully this helps, if you're looking for a handy way to track down which API response contains a JSON syntax error I've written an Angular module for that.
Here's the module:
/**
* Track Incomplete XHR Requests
*
* Extend httpInterceptor to track XHR completions and keep a queue
* of our HTTP requests in order to find if any are incomplete or
* never finish, usually this is the source of the issue if it's
* XHR related
*/
angular.module( "xhrErrorTracking", [
'ng',
'ngResource'
] )
.factory( 'xhrErrorTracking', [ '$q', function( $q ) {
var currentResponse = false;
return {
response: function( response ) {
currentResponse = response;
return response || $q.when( response );
},
responseError: function( rejection ) {
var requestDesc = currentResponse.config.method + ' ' + currentResponse.config.url;
if ( currentResponse.config.params ) requestDesc += ' ' + JSON.stringify( currentResponse.config.params );
console.warn( 'JSON Errors Found in XHR Response: ' + requestDesc, currentResponse );
return $q.reject( rejection );
}
};
} ] )
.config( [ '$httpProvider', function( $httpProvider ) {
$httpProvider.interceptors.push( 'xhrErrorTracking' );
} ] );
More details can be found in the blog article referenced above, I haven't posted everything found there here as it's probably not all relevant.
Make sure that response is in JSON format otherwise fires this error.
I got the same error while calling an API in React using the fetch API with the POST method.
Before:
fetch('/api/v1/tour',{
method:"POST",
headers:{"Content-type":"json/application"},
body:JSON.stringify(info)
})
.then((response)=>response.json())
.then((json)=>{
if(json.status === 'success')
alert(json.message)
else
console.log('something went wrong :(')
}).catch(e=>console.log(e))
I resolved the error by changing the headers to {"Content-type":"application/json"}:
After:
fetch('/api/v1/tour',{
method:"POST",
headers:{"Content-type":"application/json"},
body:JSON.stringify(info)
})
.then((response)=>response.json())
.then((json)=>{
if(json.status === 'success')
alert(json.message)
else
console.log('something went wrong :(')
}).catch(e=>console.log(e))
I had the same error message following a tutorial. Our issue seems to be 'url: this.props.url' in the ajax call. In React.DOM when you are creating your element, mine looks like this.
ReactDOM.render(
<CommentBox data="/api/comments" pollInterval={2000}/>,
document.getElementById('content')
);
Well, this CommentBox does not have a url in its props, just data. When I switched url: this.props.url -> url: this.props.data, it made the right call to the server and I got back the expected data.
I hope it helps.
The possibilities for this error are overwhelming.
In my case, I found that the issue was adding the homepage filed in package.json caused the issue.
Worth checking: in package.json change:
homepage: "www.example.com"
to
hompage: ""
Malformed JSON or HTML instead of JSON is the underlying cause of this issue, as described by the other answers, however in my case I couldn't reliably replicate this error, as if the server was sometimes returning valid JSON, and other times returning something else like an HTML error page or similar.
In order to avoid it breaking the page altogether, I resorted to manually trying to parse the returned content, and share it in case it helps anyone else resolve it for them.
const url = "https://my.server.com/getData";
fetch(url).then(response => {
if (!response.ok) return; // call failed
response.text().then(shouldBeJson => { // get the text-only of the response
let json = null;
try {
json = JSON.parse(shouldBeJson); // try to parse that text
} catch (e) {
console.warn(e); // json parsing failed
return;
};
if (!json) return; // extra check just to make sure we have something now.
// do something with my json object
});
});
While this obviously doesn't resolve the root cause of the issue, it can still help to handle the issue a bit more gracefully and take some kind of reasonable action in instances when it fails.
For the React app made by CRA there are two main problems we might face while fetching the JSON data of any <dummy.json>
file.
I have my dummy.json file in my project and am trying to fetch the JSON data from that file but I got two errors:
"SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0 .
I got an HTML file rather than actual JSON Data in the response in the Network tab in Chrome or any browser.
Here are the main two reasons behind that which solved my issue.
Your JSON data is invalid in your JSON file.
It might be that the JSON file did not load properly for this so you just restart your React server. This is my issue, within React.
React direct running or access the public folder not the src folder.
How I solved it:
I moved my file into the public folder and access is directly in any file of the src folder.
Making a REST call in the Redux action.js:
export const fetchDummy = ()=>{
return (dispatch)=>{
dispatch(fetchDummyRequest());
fetch('./assets/DummyData.json')
.then(response => {
if (!response.ok) {
throw new Error("HTTP error " + response.status);
}
return response.json();
})
.then(result => {
dispatch(fetchDummySuccess(result))
})
.catch(function (err) {
dispatch(fetchDummyFailure(err))
})
}
}
This might be old. But it just occurred in Angular where the content type for request and response were different in my code. So check headers for
let headers = new Headers({
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
**Accept**: 'application/json'
});
in React axios
axios({
method:'get',
url:'http:// ',
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
Accept: 'application/json'
},
responseType:'json'
})
jQuery Ajax:
$.ajax({
url: this.props.url,
dataType: 'json',
**headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
Accept: 'application/json'
},**
cache: false,
success: function (data) {
this.setState({ data: data });
}.bind(this),
error: function (xhr, status, err) {
console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString());
}.bind(this)
});
},
After spending a lot of time with this, I found out that in my case the problem was having "homepage" defined on my package.json file made my app not work on firebase (same 'token' error).
I created my react app using create-react-app, then I used the firebase guide on the READ.me file to deploy to github pages, realized I had to do extra work for the router to work, and switched to firebase. github guide had added the homepage key on package.json and caused the deploy issue.
Protip: Testing json on a local Node.js server? Make sure you don't already have something routing to that path
'/:url(app|assets|stuff|etc)';
For me, this happened when one of the properties on the object I was returning as JSON threw an exception.
public Dictionary<string, int> Clients { get; set; }
public int CRCount
{
get
{
var count = 0;
//throws when Clients is null
foreach (var c in Clients) {
count += c.Value;
}
return count;
}
}
Adding a null check, fixed it for me:
public Dictionary<string, int> Clients { get; set; }
public int CRCount
{
get
{
var count = 0;
if (Clients != null) {
foreach (var c in Clients) {
count += c.Value;
}
}
return count;
}
}
just something basic to check, make sure you dont have anything commented out in the json file
//comments here will not be parsed and throw error
In python you can use json.Dump(str) before send result to html template.
with this command string convert to correct json format and send to html template. After send this result to JSON.parse(result) , this is correct response and you can use this.
For some, this may help you guys:
I had a similar experience with Wordpress REST API. I even used Postman to check if I had the correct routes or endpoint. I later found out that I accidentally put an "echo" inside my script - hooks:
Debug & check your console
Cause of the error
So basically, this means that I printed a value that isn't JSON that is mixed with the script that causes AJAX error - "SyntaxError: Unexpected token r in JSON at position 0"
In my case (backend), I was using res.send(token);
Everything got fixed when I changed to res.send(data);
You may want to check this if everything is working and posting as intended, but the error keeps popping up in your front-end.
In my Case there was problem with "Bearer" in header ideally it should be "Bearer "(space after the end character) but in my case it was "Bearer" there was no space after the character. Hope it helps some one!

Im getting unexpectected token : for a valid JSON

I am working with ArcGIS, Esri request and I am trying to get a data from a webserver, but everytime I got the same "unexpected token : " error even when my response is correct.
Thanks in advance.
Here's my code:
require(["dojo/dom", "dojo/on", "dojo/dom-class", "dojo/_base/json", "esri/urlUtils", "esri/config", "esri/request", "dojo/domReady!"], function(dom, on, domClass, dojoJson, urlUtils, esriConfig, esriRequest) {
// fallback to proxy for non-CORS capable browsers
// esri.config.defaults.io.proxyUrl = "/arcgisserver/apis/javascript/proxy/proxy.ashx";
esriConfig.defaults.io.proxyUrl = "/proxy/proxy.ashx";
dom.byId("url").value = "http://api.citybik.es/v2/networks/dublinbikes";
dom.byId("content").value = "";
//handle the Go button's click event
on(dom.byId("submitRequest"), "click", getContent);
function getContent(){
var contentDiv = dom.byId("content");
contentDiv.value = "";
domClass.remove(contentDiv, "failure");
dom.byId("status").innerHTML = "Downloading...";
// //get the url
// var url = urlUtils.urlToObject(dom.byId("url").value);
// console.log("EL URL path",url.path)
// console.log("EL URL query",url.query)
// var requestHandle = esriRequest({
// "url": url.path,
// "content": url.query
// });
// requestHandle.then(requestSucceeded, requestFailed);
function requestSucceeded(data) {
console.log(data);
}
function requestFailed(error) {
console.log("Error: ", error.message);
}
var request = esriRequest({
url: "http://api.citybik.es/v2/networks/dublinbikes",
content: {
format: "json"
},
handleAs: "json",
callbackParamName: "retrive"
});
request.then(requestSucceeded, requestFailed);
}
}
);
Im getting:
Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token : dublinbikes:2
The root problem is that you're getting esri.request a bit confused with what you're asking for, and what the server is giving back. Because you're making a request on a different domain (api.citybik.es) from where you're running the code (whatever your host is), you need to use either:
CORS
JSONP
a proxy
to get around the browser's security restrictions. There's plenty of detail on SO about these, I won't dribble on further.
Your code has two methods configured - the callbackParamName tells esri.request to use JSONP, and you've also got a proxy set just in case. The callbackParamName tells it to only use JSONP though, so the proxy is ignored.
Now the real problem, as I noted in a comment above, is that v2 of the CityBikes API doesn't actually seem to support JSONP, so your callback parameter is ignored and the server gives you back straight JSON. esri.request is expecting JSONP, and voila - unexpected token :. Requesting
http://api.citybik.es/v2/networks/dublinbikes?callback=stackoverflow
returns:
{
network: {
company: "JCDecaux",
href: "/v2/networks/dublinbikes",
....
See? No mention of our stackoverflow variable. If you look at v1 of the API instead, that DOES support JSONP. Requesting
http://api.citybik.es/dublinbikes.json?callback=stackoverflow
returns:
stackoverflow(
[
{
bikes: 1,
name: "Fenian Street",
idx: 0,
....
...and there is our stackoverflow variable. OR you can remove the callbackParamName from your esriRequest, and see if your proxy will process the JSON from the v2 address.

Cakephp - If Request is JSON?

I have read the RequestHandler part in cookbook. There are isXml(), isRss(), etc. But there's no isJson().
Any other way to check whether a request is JSON?
So when the url is mysite.com/products/view/1.json it will give JSON data, but without .json it will give the HTML View.
Thanks
I dont think cakePHP has some function like isJson() for json data, you could create your custom though, like:
//may be in your app controller
function isJson($data) {
return (json_decode($data) != NULL) ? true : false;
}
//and you can use it in your controller
if( $this->isJson($your_request_data) ) {
...
}
Added:
if you want to check .json extension and process accordingly, then you could do in your controller:
$this->request->params['ext']; //which would give you 'json' if you have .json extension
CakePHP is handling this correctly, because JSON is a response type and not a type of request. The terms request and response might be causing some confusing. The request object represents the header information of the HTTP request sent to the server. A browser usually sends POST or GET requests to a server, and those requests can not be formatted as JSON. So it's not possible for a request to be of type JSON.
With that said, the server can give a response of JSON and a browser can put in the request header that it supports a JSON response. So rather than check what the request was. Check what accepted responses are supported by the browser.
So instead of writing $this->request->isJson() you should write $this->request->accepts('application/json').
This information is ambiguously shown in the document here, but there is no reference see also links in the is(..) documentation. So many people look there first. Don't see JSON and assume something is missing.
If you want to use a request detector to check if the browser supports a JSON response, then you can easily add a one liner in your beforeFilter.
$this->request->addDetector('json',array('callback'=>function($req){return $req->accepts('application/json');}));
There is a risk associated with this approach, because a browser can send multiple response types as a possible response from the server. Including a wildcard for all types. So this limits you to only requests that indicate a JSON response is supported. Since JSON is a text format a type of text/plain is a valid response type for a browser expecting JSON.
We could modify our rule to include text/plain for JSON responses like this.
$this->request->addDetector('json',array('callback'=>function($req){
return $req->accepts('application/json') || $req->accepts('text/plain');
}));
That would include text/plain requests as a JSON response type, but now we have a problem. Just because the browser supports a text/plain response doesn't mean it's expecting a JSON response.
This is why it's better to incorporate a naming convention into your URL to indicate a JSON response. You can use a .json file extension or a /json/controller/action prefix.
I prefer to use a named prefix for URLs. That allows you to create json_action methods in your controller. You can then create a detector for the prefix like this.
$this->request->addDetector('json',array('callback'=>function($req){return isset($req->params['prefix']) && $req->params['prefix'] == 'json';}));
Now that detector will always work correctly, but I argue it's an incorrect usage of detecting a JSON request. Since there is no such thing as a JSON request. Only JSON responses.
You can make your own detectors. See: http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/controllers/request-response.html#inspecting-the-request
For example in your AppController.php
public function beforeFilter() {
$this->request->addDetector(
'json',
[
'callback' => [$this, 'isJson']
]
);
parent::beforeFilter();
}
public function isJson() {
return $this->response->type() === 'application/json';
}
Now you can use it:
$this->request->is('json'); // or
$this->request->isJson();
Have you looked through and followed the very detailed instructions in the book?:
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/views/json-and-xml-views.html
class TestController extends Controller {
public $autoRender = false;
public function beforeFilter() {
$this->request->addDetector('json', array('env' => 'CONTENT_TYPE', 'pattern' => '/application\/json/i'));
parent::beforeFilter();
}
public function index() {
App::uses('HttpSocket', 'Network/Http');
$url = 'http://localhost/myapp/test/json';
$json = json_encode(
array('foo' => 'bar'),
JSON_HEX_TAG | JSON_HEX_APOS | JSON_HEX_QUOT | JSON_HEX_AMP
);
$options = array('header' => array('Content-Type' => 'application/json'));
$request = new HttpSocket();
$body = $request->post($url, $json, $options)->body;
$this->response->body($body);
}
public function json() {
if ($this->request->isJson()) {
$data = $this->request->input('json_decode');
$value = property_exists($data, 'foo') ? $data->foo : '';
}
$body = (isset($value) && $value === 'bar') ? 'ok' : 'fail';
$this->response->body($body);
}
}
Thanks a lot Mr #Schlaefer. I read your comment and try, Wow it's working now.
//AppController.php
function beforeFilter() {
$this->request->addDetector(
'json', [
'callback' => [$this, 'isJson']
]
);
parent::beforeFilter();
...
}
public function isJson() {
return $this->response->type() === 'application/json';
}
//TasksController.php
public $components = array('Paginator', 'Flash', Session','RequestHandler');
//Get tasks function return all tasks in json format
public function getTasks() {
$limit = 20;
$conditions = array();
if (!empty($this->request->query['status'])) {
$conditions = ['Task.status' => $this->request->query['status']];
}
if (!empty($this->request->query['limit'])) {
$limit = $this->request->query['limit'];
}
$this->Paginator->settings = array('limit' => $limit, 'conditions' => $conditions);
$tasks = $this->paginate();
if ($this->request->isJson()) {
$this->set(
array(
'tasks' => $tasks,
'_serialize' => array('tasks')
));
}
}
In case anybody is reading this in the days of CakePHP 4, the correct and easy way to do this is by using $this->request->is('json').

How to see what JSON returns in my view

Can some one help or explain to me how this works please?
i have in my view:
<script type="text/javascript">
var jqxhr = $.getJSON("<%= Url.Action("GetTrainingModulePoints" , "Home") %>", function (json) {
console.log(json);
});
</script>
GetTrainingModulePoints should return 4 rows each containing a value for interactiontype and a value for points
in the console log i just get [object object]?
how can i see what is in the variable json?
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/542/firebug.png/
thanks
Look at the Network tab in FireBug or similar javascript debugging tool. There you will see the AJAX request and all you have to do is expand the request and look at the response.
Here's for example how that might look like in FireBug for a sample AJAX request:
And if you click on the JSON tab you will see the output formatted as a JSON object where you could expand/collapse the properties.
If for some very weird reason you cannot use a javascript debugging tool in your web browser (I don't know even know how you could be developing a web application, but ...) you could use the JSON.stringify method that's built into modern browsers:
var jqxhr = $.getJSON("<%= Url.Action("GetTrainingModulePoints" , "Home") %>", function (json) {
alert(JSON.stringify(json));
});
And if you are not using a modern browser which doesn't have the JSON.stringify method natively built-in you could still reference the json2.js script to your page.
UPDATE:
OK, it seems that your confusion comes from the fact that you are getting {"success":true} whereas you were expecting to get the rows from your stored procedure. I know this because I answered your previous question.
Here's how your controller action look like:
[HttpGet]
public JsonResult GetTrainingModulePoints()
{
var currentUser = ZincService.GetUserForId(CurrentUser.UserId);
ZincService.TrainingService.GetTrainingModulePoints(currentUser.UserId);
return Json(new { success = true }, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}
As you can see in this controller action you are always returning success = true. If you want to return the results from your stored procedure you could do this:
[HttpGet]
public JsonResult GetTrainingModulePoints()
{
var currentUser = ZincService.GetUserForId(CurrentUser.UserId);
var modulePoints = ZincService.TrainingService.GetTrainingModulePoints(currentUser.UserId);
return Json(
new {
success = true,
modulePoints = modulePoints
},
JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet
);
}
Here I assume that your TrainingService.GetTrainingModulePoints method is actually returning some object. If this is not the case you will have to explain what those methods are doing and how do you expect to get the output.

AJAX response using Jquery (with zend framework) contains unwanted HTML Code

Currently, the following code works as intended but if I add an echo such as "LANG: en" anywhere in the code (let's say in the bootstrap), the following code won't work anymore and I get this ajax request response :
<br/>LANG : en{"response":true,"id":13}
(the ajax response contains the echo + json array ) and therefore I'm not able to print the id (it will print : undefined when i will try to access to data.id).
My question is : How can I print my debug info and still manage to perform ajax requests ?
Here is my code in the controller :
public function init()
{
$this->_helper->ajaxContext->addActionContext('retrievecategories', 'json')->initContext();
}
public function retrievecategoriesAction()
{
$this->_helper->layout()->disableLayout();
$this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender(true);
if ($this->getRequest()->isXmlHttpRequest()) {
if (isset($_POST['id']))
$id = $_POST['id'];
$id+=1;
echo json_encode(array('response' => true, 'id' => $id));
}
}
My js code :
jQuery(function(){
var obj = {"id":12};
jQuery.ajax({
url: '/search/retrievecategories?json',
type: 'post',
data: obj,
dataType: 'json',
success: function(data){
var id = data.id;
alert(id);
},
error: function(data){
var id = data.id;
alert(id);
}
});
});
I hope I was clear enough. Thank you for your time !
If you echo anything but the JSON object, the JQuery parser will fail because the response is no longer a valid JSON. you could make a custom parser which interprets the response text and takes away the debug info leaving the JSON object, or you can include the debug info in the array you encode.
json_encode(array('data'=>'data','debug'=>'debug info'))
Then you detect if the debug field is present and after a console.log() or alert() you delete it form the object.
I would strongly recommend that you read about firePHP. It uses the same console that Firebug uses to display debug information from your php code. It is really simple to use with the Zend_Log.