CakePHP and RESTful webservices

Question

I'm try to develop a simple webservices in CakePHP 2.1. So, i first created a DB table:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `people` (
  `id` char(36) COLLATE utf8_bin NOT NULL,
  `first_name` varchar(100) COLLATE utf8_bin DEFAULT NULL,
  `last_name` varchar(100) COLLATE utf8_bin NOT NULL,
  `home_address` varchar(100) COLLATE utf8_bin DEFAULT NULL,
  `job_address` varchar(100) COLLATE utf8_bin DEFAULT NULL,
  `phone` varchar(20) COLLATE utf8_bin DEFAULT NULL,
  `fax` varchar(20) COLLATE utf8_bin DEFAULT NULL,
  `mail` varchar(100) COLLATE utf8_bin DEFAULT NULL,
  `birth_date` int(11) DEFAULT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_bin 

Than I've created a simple Person model:

<?php
class Person extends AppModel {
    public $name = 'Person';
}

And respective controller:

<?php
class PeopleController extends AppController {
    public $components = array('RequestHandler');

    public function index() {      
        $people = $this->Person->find('all');
        $this->set(array(
            'people' => $people,
            '_serialize' => array('person')
        ));
    }
}

and finally, in routes.php, I've mapped the proper roote:

<?php
Router::mapResources('people');
Router::parseExtensions('json');
Router::connect('/', array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'display', 'home'));
Router::connect('/pages/*', array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'display'));
CakePlugin::routes();
require CAKE . 'Config' . DS . 'routes.php';

but when I try to reach ht_tp://localhost/cakephp/people.json I get:

<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr501541d86308c-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr501541d86308c-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined index: person [<b>CORE\Cake\View\JsonView.php</b>, line <b>89</b>]<div id="cakeErr501541d86308c-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr501541d86308c-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr501541d86308c-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr501541d86308c-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr501541d86308c-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr501541d86308c-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$this-&gt;autoRender&nbsp;=&nbsp;false;</span></code>
<code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$this-&gt;View&nbsp;=&nbsp;$View;</span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$this-&gt;response-&gt;body($View-&gt;render($view,&nbsp;$layout));</span></code></span></pre><pre id="cakeErr501541d86308c-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$view = null
$layout = null
$serialize = array(
    (int) 0 =&gt; &#039;person&#039;
)
$data = array()
$key = &#039;person&#039;</pre><pre class="stack-trace">JsonView::render() - CORE\Cake\View\JsonView.php, line 89
Controller::render() - CORE\Cake\Controller\Controller.php, line 957
Dispatcher::_invoke() - CORE\Cake\Routing\Dispatcher.php, line 193
Dispatcher::dispatch() - CORE\Cake\Routing\Dispatcher.php, line 161
[main] - APP\webroot\index.php, line 92</pre></div></pre>{"person":null}

Where is the error?

Answer 1

As you can see the response you're getting is HTML. What it says (when you open it in a browser) is:

Notice (8): Undefined index: person [CORE\Cake\View\JsonView.php, line 89]
Code Context
JsonView::render() - CORE\Cake\View\JsonView.php, line 89
Controller::render() - CORE\Cake\Controller\Controller.php, line 957
Dispatcher::_invoke() - CORE\Cake\Routing\Dispatcher.php, line 193
Dispatcher::dispatch() - CORE\Cake\Routing\Dispatcher.php, line 161
[main] - APP\webroot\index.php, line 92
{"person":null}

Do you have any records in the database at all? Also what about the view for this method? It should be something like:

// app/View/People/json/index.ctp
<?php
echo json_encode(compact('people'));

Notice that the index.ctp file is located in the json sub-folder. Check the book out on JSON and XML views and comment if there are further problems.

Answer 2

The error clearly shows you had set $serialize, not $_serialize viewVar

use '_serialize' like you have in your code example yourself.

Also make sure the var you want to serialize matches a viewVar that is present.

you serializing $person, while you set $people