Clean Ajax controller implementation in Zend Framework

Question

I need a controller in my Zend Framework project, which should handle only ajax requests.

My approach at the moment is to extend the Zend_Controller_Action:

Answer 1

You can simply use

$this->_helper->json($data);

wherever you like. It disables everything not needed, clears the response, encode data to json, sends the response and set propper headers as a bonus. This is the most "zend-way" there is I guess ;)