Zend Framework - Generate data in controller and pass to view for use in Javascript. How?

Question

I have a bit of data that I want to use to build a form's select field. The JS that generates the form (it's part of the jqgrid plugin) is in the view. How do I get the data from the controller into the javascript so I can use it?

To just get something working I tried the following...

In the controller I created an action to return some sample data:

public function testAction()
    {
        $this->_helper->layout()->disableLayout();
        $this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender();
        $a = "0:Select";
        return Zend_Json::encode($a);
    }

In the view I make an ajax call to that action:

 var testselect = $.ajax({
     url: '/admin/sites/test',
     dataType: "json",
     complete: function(data) {
             console.log(data);
     }
 });  

And this returns an XMLHTTPRequest object that contains, in part:

responseText:""
status:200
statusText:"OK"

Shouldn't the responseText be whatever was returned by the call to /admin/sites/test?

In my mind this is what is happening:

1. the view makes an ajax request to the test action of the sites controller in the admin module
2. the test action JSON encodes the contents of $a and returns it
3. the complete callback function of testselect logs the result to the console and should have the contents of $a in the responseText.

Where am I misunderstanding this? Is there a better way to do this? Like, could the controller pass the needed data to the view object and then I somehow access that in the javascript (though how, without making an ajax request or putting the data into some superglobal like $_SESSION I don't know)?

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Try this:

public function testAction() {
  $data = array('firstname' => 'Benny', 'surname' => 'Hill');
  $this->_helper->json($data);
}

See the section about the json action helper in the documentation.

You could also read up on the section about the action helpers ContextSwitch and AjaxContext