Suppress the default template from a view with CakePHP

I'm doing some experimenting with AJAX in CakePHP and it seems to work except that the view that gets returned includes the default template. How can I get rid of that (or even just specify a different empty template for a view)?

From stackoverflow

• function ajaxFunction() {
      //do stuff
      $this->layout= 'ajax';
  }
  

  Ajax is an included blank layout to prevent extra markup being added, exactly what you want.

  http://book.cakephp.org/view/96/Layouts

  tooshel : That is exactly it! Thanks! That layout still includes debug info but now that I look it's just the SQL and not the controller dump which is exactly what I would need . . very cool.

• Try using RequestHandler component. This will be handled automatically for you. Then, you can do something like this in your AppController::beforeFilter()

  if($this->RequestHandler->isAjax()) {
      Configure::write('debug',0);
  }
  

• You will also need to turn off debug output otherwise cake will squirt out all the debug info you usually see at the bottom of the page:

  function ajaxFunction() {
      //do stuff
      Configure::write('debug', 0);
      $this->layout= 'ajax';
  }