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

Question

I wish to make use of modals in my app, for which I will use jQuery'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?

Answer 1

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.