How Is Chtml::ajax 'data' Sent

Yii 1.1 General Discussion
1

I’m working on just basic stats for how long someone is on a page, these are sent via JavaScript to the controller, but I’m struggling to extract the values.

How exactly does it send teh data.




<script>

	var timeStarted, a, b, c, timeLeft, pageData; 


	timeStarted = new Date().getTime();

	a = 1;

	b = 2;

	c = 3;


window.onbeforeunload = function()

	{


	timeLeft = new Date().getTime();

	

	pageData = [timeStarted, a, b, c, timeLeft];

			

	// Set url for JavaSCript

	var url = '/localhost/item/viewedItem';

	

    <?php echo CHtml::ajax(array(

            'url'=>'js:url',

            'data'=> "js: $(pageData).serialize()",

            'type'=>'post',

            'dataType'=>'json',

            )) ?>;

			

	}	

</script>

Then within the controller I just don’t know how i’d access the results. I’ve tried just

$pageData = CJSON::encode($_POST);

$viewed->a = $pageData[‘a’];

2

The ‘data’ option in an ajax call can be either an array/object or a string, so you don’t have to process it. And the serialize() method is used for DOM elements, not arrays/objects. If you’d want to turn an array/object into a string you would use the jQuery.param() method.

I think that serialize() in your current code could return an empty string. Test it yourself in the Firebug console by running this code:




pageData = [timeStarted, a, b, c, timeLeft];

$(pageData).serialize()

Without adding a colon ‘;’ after the last line it will make Firebug log the return value to the console.

You should do the same on the server side, just check the contents of $_POST by debugging, logging the value using Yii::log or error_log or simply echo’ing it using var_dump().

3

Thanks for your help, in the end I did change my data to be an array of objects and passed worked with returning the serialized data back via ajax gto see what was returned.

Thanks