Posting Form Data to ZF2 Controller With Ajax

Question

EDIT-
I have posted the answer below.

The question is that I don't understand how/where ZF2 posts form data when a submit button is pressed. So, when I do
if ($this->getRequest()->isPost()){
after the ajax call below, it tells me that no data has been posted.

When I do the above isPost() if statement it works perfectly when I hit the submit button, telling me the data has been posted and subsequently telling me that the form data is valid.

Here is the ajax call-

            <script>
                $.ajax({
                    url: urlform,
                    type: 'POST',
                    dataType: 'json',
                    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                    async: true,
                    data: ($("#newThoughtForm").serialize() + '&submit=go'),
                    success: function () {
                        console.log('SUBMIT WORKS');
                        setTimeout(function () { <?php echo $this->invokeIndexAction()->test(); ?> ;
                        }, 1000);
                    },
//This keeps getting executed because there is no response, as the controller action is not run on a Post()
                    error: function () {
                        console.log('There is error while submit');
                        setTimeout(function () { <?php echo $this->invokeIndexAction()->test(); ?> ;
                        }, 1000);
                    }
//I assume the data won't get pushed to the server if there is no response,
//but I can't figure out how to give a response in ZF2 since the controller is not
//run when the Post() is made. 
                });

Here's the Form-

            use Zend\Form\Form;

            class newAlbumForm extends Form
            {
                public function __construct()
                {
                    parent::__construct('newAlbumForm');
                    $this->setAttribute('method', 'post');

                    $this->add(array(
                        'type' => 'AlbumModule\Form\newAlbumFieldset',
                        'options' => array(
                            'use_as_base_fieldset' => true
                        )
                    ));

                    $this->add(array(
                            'name' => 'submit',
                                'attributes' => array(
                                    'type' => 'submit',
                                    'value' => 'go'
                        ),
                    ));
                }
            }

The request for the ajax call-

            Request URL:http://test/newAlbum.html
            Request Method:POST
            Status Code:200 OK
            Request Headersview source
            Accept:*/*
            Accept-Encoding:gzip,deflate,sdch
            Accept-Language:en-US,en;q=0.8
            Connection:keep-alive
            Content-Length:46
            Content-Type:application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8
            Cookie:PHPSESSID=h46r1fmj35d1vu11nua3r49he4
            Host:test
            Origin:http://test
            Referer:http://test/newAlbum.html
            User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.101 Safari/537.36
            X-Requested-With:XMLHttpRequest
            Form Dataview sourceview URL encoded
            album[albumText]:hello world
            submit:go
            Response Headersview source
            Connection:Keep-Alive
            Content-Length:4139
            Content-Type:text/html
            Date:Sun, 20 Oct 2013 16:52:15 GMT
            Keep-Alive:timeout=5, max=99
            Server:Apache/2.4.4 (Win64) PHP/5.4.12
            X-Powered-By:PHP/5.4.12

The request for the submit button-

            Request URL:http://test/newAlbum.html
            Request Method:POST
            Status Code:200 OK
            Request Headersview source
            Accept:text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
            Accept-Encoding:gzip,deflate,sdch
            Accept-Language:en-US,en;q=0.8
            Connection:keep-alive
            Content-Length:46
            Content-Type:application/x-www-form-urlencoded
            Cookie:PHPSESSID=h46r1fmj35d1vu11nua3r49he4
            Host:test
            Origin:http://test
            Referer:http://test/newAlbum.html
            User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.101 Safari/537.36
            Form Dataview sourceview URL encoded
            album[albumText]:hello world
            submit:go
            Response Headersview source
            Connection:Keep-Alive
            Content-Length:4139
            Content-Type:text/html
            Date:Sun, 20 Oct 2013 16:52:14 GMT
            Keep-Alive:timeout=5, max=100
            Server:Apache/2.4.4 (Win64) PHP/5.4.12
            X-Powered-By:PHP/5.4.12

Here is the indexAction() on the controller for completeness-

            public function indexAction()
            {
                echo 'console.log("Index Action is Called");';

                $form = new \AlbumModule\Form\newAlbumForm();
                if ($this->getRequest()->isPost()){
                    echo 'console.log("Data posted");';

                    $form->setData($this->getRequest()->getPost());
                    if ($form->isValid()){
                        echo 'console.log("Form Valid");';

                        //todo
                        $this->forward()->dispatch('newAlbum', array('action' => 'submitAlbum'));
                        return new ViewModel(
                            array(
                                    'form' => $form
                            )
                        );
                    } else {
                        echo 'console.log("Form Invalid");';

                        return new ViewModel(
                            array(
                                    'form' => $form
                            )
                        );
                    }
                } else {
                    echo 'console.log("No data posted")';
                    return new ViewModel(
                            array(
                                    'form' => $form
                            )
                        );
                }
            }

As I stated at the beginning, the isPost() class will return a value of true when the button submits the form, but it will return a value of false when the form is submitted through Ajax.

EDIT-
I have posted the answer below.

Answer 1

Thanks to SzymonM I was able to figure this out,

Basically, it seems that you HAVE to post to an action as type json, this means that whatever controller/action that you're posting to has to return a 'success' response for the jquery ajax call to also return success.
So, trying to post to the index action creates problems as you would be trying to return viewModel objects or a json response through many if statements.
The best option is to post the json request to a different action which will manage the request and response.

Ajax Action-

public function ajaxAction()
{
    $form       = new \AlbumModule\Form\newAlbumForm();
    $request    = $this->getRequest();
    $response   = $this->getResponse();

    if ($request->isPost()) {
        //$hello is a test variable used for checking if the form is valid
        //by checking the response
        $hello = 1;
        $form->setData($request->getPost());
        if ($form->isValid()){
            $hello = 4020;
        };
    }

    $messages = array();

    if (!empty($messages)){       
        $response->setContent(\Zend\Json\Json::encode($messages));
    } else {
        $response->setContent(\Zend\Json\Json::encode(array('success'=>1,'hello'=>$hello)));
    }

        return $response;
}

Ajax Call-

var urlform = '<?php echo $this->url('AlbumModule\newAlbum\home', array('controller'=>'newAlbum', 'action'=>'ajax')); ?>';

$.ajax({
    url: urlform,
    type: 'POST',
    dataType: 'json',
    async: true,
    data: $("#newAlbumForm").serialize(),
    success: function (data) {
        console.log(data);
    }
    error: function (data) {
        console.log(data);
    }
});

Answer 2

There is a module for Zend Framework 2 called WasabiLib. It has almost everything onboard to manage ajax requests and responses in a very convinient way. Take a look at the simple example on its homepage providing a simple form:

//inside the phtml
<form id="simpleForm" class="ajax_element" action="simpleFormExample" method="POST"
    data-ajax-loader="myLoader">

    <input type="text" name="written_text">
    <input type="submit" value="try it">
    <i id="myLoader" class="fa fa-spinner fa-pulse fa-lg" style="display: none;"></i>
</form>


//Server-side code
public function simpleFormExampleAction(){
    $postArray = $this->getRequest()->getPost();
    $input = $postArray['written_text'];
    $response = new Response(new InnerHtml("#element_simple_form","Server Response: ".$input));

    return $this->getResponse()->setContent($response);
}

Answer 3

the best approach is to use the

AcceptableViewModelSelector

controller plugin to switch between different strategies

first in module.config.php

 return [
     'view_manager'=>[
       'Strategies'=> 'ViewJsonStrategy',     
     ]
 ]

and in the controller example: IndexController.php in the indexAction

class IndexController extends AbstarctActionController{

        protected $accptCretiria = [
          'Zend\View\Model\ViewModel'=>'text/html',
          'Zend\View\Model\JsonModel'=>'application/json, text/json'
        ];

        public function indexAction(){
            //here if is ajax call it returns jsonView ,and if is normal call it return ViewModel
            $viewModel =  $this->acceptableViewModelSelector($this->acceptCretiria);

        return $viewModel
        }
    }

Answer 4

Usually when you send data from ajax, you don't need to render your template again, and that's what ViewModel do.

Try to add json strategy to your module.config.php

'view_manager' => array(
    //other configuration
    'strategies' => array(
        'ViewJsonStrategy',
    ),
),

Then your action should look like this:

public function ajaxAction()
{
    $request = $this->getRequest();

    if ($request->isXmlHttpRequest()){ // If it's ajax call
        $data = $request->getPost('data'));
        ...
    }


    return new JsonModel($formData);
}