Error handling when accessing API through AJAX

[ki1022]

I am working on a project where I need to use html/javascript and I only want to interact with the API via ajax/json calls from a different server. I also don't want to heavily modify the default Userfrosting install and want to keep the bootstrap theme for administration on the server-side.

So if I access "load_current_user.php" from a browser, addAlert() and apiReturnError() will send client to login.php or their default page through a 302 re-direct. How can I maintain this functionality but optionally send back a json_encode() error to client when the request is made from AJAX call? How can the error handle function differentiate between the requests.

I thought of just calling a different php file, ex: load_current_user.php vs load_current_user_ajax.php, but that seems like to much extra work to do this for the whole API.

[ki1022]

I think I already answered my own question. I just had to echo json_encode(error); before apiReturnError() caused the 302.

[alexweissman]

Actually, if you look at for example line 40 of create_user.php, you'll see the line
$ajax = checkRequestMode("post");

This actually checks the request mode, and determines whether or not this is an ajax request by checking for the ajaxMode=true value in the request.

You can then pass $ajax into apiReturnError, for example on line 62 of create_user.php:
apiReturnError($ajax, SITE_ROOT);