ANY good/simple examples of Ajax in Cake 1.3 without using deprecated helpers?

I've used AJAX a lot in PHP, but now I'm trying to learn CakePHP, and haven't been able to ANY good/simple examples of how to use AJAX with CakePHP 1.3. The only examples I've been able to find are for paging (not what I need), or use the deprecated helpers while forcing y开发者_Go百科ou to include scriptaculous or prototype.

Are there ANY good/simple examples of how to use AJAX w/ CakePHP 1.3? Or is it something someone could explain here?

All I want to do is have the user click a link, which retrieves the contents of a php file, and inserts it into a div. The contents of the php file would be altered based on some POST or GET variables sent w/ the ajax call. Seems simple enough :(

This is the pattern that I use in CakePHP 1.3.x. The process is generally:

1. Creating alternative json-oriented layout and view files
2. Detecting if the incoming request is AJAX
3. Explicitly rendering the alternative json layout/view instead of text/html

Be sure to include RequestHandler component and JsHelper in your app controller.

In a given controller:

function test() {
    if($this->RequestHandler->isAjax()) {
        $this->set('data', $this->data);
        // Explicit call to render an ajax response, using a layout and view made specifically for ajax
        $this->layout = 'json';
        $this->render('ajax_test');    
    }
    // else render views/controllername/test.ctp like normal
}

Your app/views/layouts/json.ctp file:

<?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;
?>

Your app/views/controllername/ajax_test.ctp file should contain only:

<?php echo $js->object($data); ?>

Now, on your page that's actually going to make an ajax call, it might look something like this, with jQuery code:

<div id='status'></div>
<?php echo $form->create('Test', array('id'=>'testForm')),
           $form->input('message'),
           $form->end();
?>
<script type='text/javascript'>
    $('#testForm').submit(function(event) {
    event.preventDefault(); // interrupt form submission
    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: "/controllername/test",
        data: $('#testForm').serialize(),
        success: function(data, textStatus, xmlHttpRequest) {               
            $("#status").html(data.Test.message);
        },
        error: function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) {
            alert("There was a problem processing the request: " + jqXHR);
        }
    });
});
</script>

You can check http://wakeusup.com/2011/06/kkajaxify-plugin-cakephp/ for a great ajax plugin

I usually include a js file in the required view $this->Html->script('file', false);. Then, in that file I do all the necessary AJAX stuff (build the data to be sent, send it to another page, bring the data back and finally show it in the required div).

But be aware, that the file the data is sent to needs to be relative to the app's root. This is the only way I got it working ($.get('/users/view/5'); - in jQuery)