CakePHP: How to use a view element inside of a controller

Question

I\'m trying to figure out how to use one of my view elements inside of a controller...

I know, I know: \"Don\'t do that!\" (99% of the time this is

Answer 1

The way I did any ajax handling in Cake was to have my own AjaxController. Any interaction of ajax-kind goes there, which in-turn uses their own views (and view partials / elements). That way you can keep your code DRY and isolate and propagate all ajax use-cases there.

Example excerpt:

autoRender = false;
        $this->layout = false;
        if (!$this->request->is('ajax')) {
            $this->redirect('/');
        }
    }
    public function preview() {
        if ($this->request->is('ajax')) {
            $this->set('data', $this->data);
            $this->render('/Elements/ajaxpreview');
        }
    } 
?>

Here's the source: https://github.com/Sobient/dosspirit/blob/master/app/Controller/AjaxController.php