CakePHP - jQuery modals in keeping with Cake's MVC structure

I wish to make use of modals in my app, for which I will use jQuery'开发者_运维技巧s UI dialog (unless anyone has better suggestions). I was hoping to keep all modal content strictly within CakePHP framework, if possible, but I'm not sure how to do this.

How would I trigger a modal that uses a controller from /controllers/_modals and a view from /view/_modals, and that still has access to Cake's framework via Ajax calls, including modals?

You shouldn't create separate models or controller just to display content on modal boxes.

Just think about it, if you want to show your users' shopping cart in a model, the guy who take cares of it is the UsersController. I mean, is the same info but displayed in different ways.

So, i'd do something like this. I'd keep the controllers the way they are, and, for example, if i want to see what the shopping cart, then you could make the ajax call to that action, and don't display the layout.

So, your UsersController:

class UsersController... {
   function shoppingCart(){
   //doing some stuff...
   $this->layout=null;
   //here you could use $this->render(); but it's not necessary
   }
}

And, in your view, you just make the ajax call (using jquery):

<?php $shoppingCartUrl = $this->Url(array('controller'=>'users','action'=>'shoppingCart'));

$.ajax({
  url: $shoppingCartUrl,
  context: document.body,
  success: function(data){
    $("#modal").html(data)
  }
});

Hope it works.