Autocomplete with ajax in Symfony2 - jquery-ui

Question

I'm using jQueryUI autocomplete to get a list of cities. I'm using a json array to display cities, but I just can't get the list to appear.
here is my Ajax function :
/**
* #Route("/ajax", name="ajax")
*/
public function ajaxAction(Request $request)
{
$value = $request->get('term');
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getEntityManager();
$branches = $em->getRepository('AOFVHFlyBundle:City')
->findByName($value);
// Get branches by user if non-admin
$json = array();
foreach ($branches as $branch) {
$json[] = array(
'label' => sprintf('%s (%s)', $branch['name'], $branch['departement']),
'value' => $branch['id']
);
}
$response = new Response();
// better way to return json - via header?
$response->setContent(json_encode($json));
return $response;
}
and here is the form input :
->add('reqdeparture', 'genemu_jqueryautocompleter_entity', array(
'class' => 'AOFVH\FlyBundle\Entity\City',
'property' => 'name',
'route_name' => 'ajax',
'attr' => array(
'placeholder'=>'Départ',
'autocomplete' => 'on')
))
Whatever I type in the input, nothing appears.
Any idea why ? (at first I thought it was because collection was too big, but I barely have 50 cities)

Answer 1

You can use JsonResponse object. The Content-Type header will be 'application/json'. Symfony manage the chars to escape automatically and others conditions to return a JSON normalized correctly.
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\JsonResponse;
/**
* #Route("/ajax", name="ajax")
*/
public function ajaxAction(Request $request)
{
$value = $request->get('term');
$branches = $this->get("doctrine.orm.default_entity_manager")
->getRepository("NamespaceMyBundle:Entity")
->findByName($value);
$json = array();
foreach ($branches as $branch) {
$json[] = array(…);
}
return new JsonResponse($json);
}