13

I'd like to implement a simple AJAX function locally that allows me to autocomplete node titles of already existing nodes as the user types. To that end, I need the ability to have an API that I can search on node titles. The problem is that when I output raw JSON, it comes surrounded by tags. So, no matter what I do, I keep getting...

<html>
    <head>
    </head>
    <body>
        <pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"> {json here}</pre>
    </body>
</html>

I've tried implementing a custom page template that only outputs content already, that produced the same results. Here is how I am currently doing this, in my module file...

<?php

/**
 * Implementation of hook_menu()
 */
function content_relation_menu() {
    $items = array();
    $items['api'] = array(
        'title' => 'Search',
        'page callback' => 'content_relation_get',
        'access callback' => TRUE,
        'type' => MENU_CALLBACK,
    );

    return $items;
}

function content_relation_get($term = '') {
    drupal_add_http_header('Content-Type', 'application/javascript; utf-8');
    $var = json_encode(
        db_query("SELECT nid,title FROM {node} WHERE title LIKE :title LIMIT 5", array(":title" => $term.'%'))->fetchAll()
    );
    echo $var;
    exit(0);
}

How can I return JUST raw JSON?

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3
  • You want the drupal_json_output function. See here or there for working examples. – keithm Nov 3 '11 at 19:02
  • Can some one show an example for Drupal 7 – Patrick W. McMahon Aug 10 '15 at 15:20
  • This is a real life example for Drupal 8: github.com/npinos/drupal8-greenhouse. It includes controller and routing, and returns a node count in JSON, exposed as an endpoint. – Nicolas Pinos Mar 25 '18 at 1:02
17

For Drupal 6, you can use drupal_json

function content_relation_get($term = '') {
    $result = db_query("SELECT nid,title FROM {node} WHERE title LIKE :title LIMIT 5", array(":title" => $term.'%'))->fetchAll()
    );
    drupal_json($result);
    exit;
}

For Drupal 7, change it to use drupal_json_output

function content_relation_get($term = '') {
    $result = db_query("SELECT nid,title FROM {node} WHERE title LIKE :title LIMIT 5", array(":title" => $term.'%'))->fetchAll()
    );
    drupal_json_output($result);
    drupal_exit();
}

It would also probably be safer to parse out the query to sanitize, error check, etc, instead of just trying to return the result.

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2
  • 3
    Just a quick note: it's generally preferable to use drupal_exit() instead of exit() after printing JSON. – geerlingguy May 17 '13 at 19:36
  • 3
    @geerlingguy Good catch; didn't notice that. For those who don't know the difference, calling drupal_exit() will invoke hook_exit(), teardown the session, etc. – mpdonadio♦ May 17 '13 at 19:42
3

I saw that there was no answer provided for Drupal 8.

In order to process JSON in Drupal 8, use the following code:

  <?php
     use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\JsonResponse;
     // ...
     $options = _menu_get_options(menu_get_menus(), $available_menus, array('mlid' => 0));
     return new JsonResponse($options);
  ?>

You can read more about it here

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