In this article, we are going to discuss about how to return XML response to views in CakePHP. CakePHP is an open source web application framework. It follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach and is written in PHP, modeled after the concepts of Ruby on Rails, and distributed under the MIT License.CakePHP uses well-known software engineering concepts and software design patterns, such as Convention over configuration, Model-View-Controller, Active Record, Association Data Mapping, and Front Controller.

Step 1:

Open the file "app\Config\routes.php" and added the following line:

/**
 * Parse XML Routes
 */
Router::parseExtensions('xml');

This enables your Controller actions to start accepting the .xml postfix e.g. http://cakephp_app/controller/action.xml

Step 2:

Enable the RequestHandler component in your Controller like this:

public $components = array('RequestHandler');

Step 3:

Once that's done, you have a few more methods at your disposal to start dealing with XML requests. First create a beforeFilter method in your Controller and add the following:

public function beforeFilter() {
    parent::beforeFilter();

    // Set XML
    if ($this->RequestHandler->isXml()) {
       $this->RequestHandler->setContent('xml');
    }
}

Step 4:

Once that's done, create the action that you want to use and be sure to add in the respondAs & renderAs methods as the official documentation is a bit flakey with their use:

public function related() {
    // Only allow XML requests
    if (!$this->RequestHandler->isXml()) {
        throw new MethodNotAllowedException();
    }

    // Set response as XML
    $this->RequestHandler->respondAs('xml');
    $this->RequestHandler->renderAs($this, 'xml');
}

Step 5:

Using those 2 methods as I was then able to create an xml folder in the corresponding View folder and inside that create my view file e.g. app\View\Uploads\xml\related.ctp

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<people>
<person>
<name>James</name>
</person>
</people>

Now if you visited the page in your browser you should see your XML output as per your View e.g. http://cakephp_app/uploads/related.xml

Wrapping Up

Further to this if you wanted to pass in some parameters to make the Controller action dynamic you can do by using the following e.g. http://cakephp_app/uploads/related/videos/1.xml

The "videos" parameter and the "1" ID will be available in the Controller like this:

// Get passed params
$uploadType = $this->request->params['pass'][0];
$uploadId = $this->request->params['pass'][1];