Playframework forwarding json values to a form - angularjs

Question

I am new to Playframework and AngularJS and developing an application in AngularJS on the front end and Playframework on the back end.
I am facing one scenario: when the user clicks a menu link (Show students), it should show all the students. In the play action, the data is sent as json. Now the problem is if the data is sent as Json, then I don't see the option for which page it should forward to.
Alternatively, I have to use the normal playframework style like forwarding to page with list of values.
//This is the current playframework code I use. Here I set the values to students form
// This is not the way I want
public static Result getAllEmployees(){
List<Student> all = Student.find.all();
JsonNode json = Json.toJson(all);
return ok(views.html.students.render(all));
}
//This is the way I want
public static Result getAllEmployees(){
List<Student> all = Student.find.all();
JsonNode json = Json.toJson(all);
return ok(json); // no option for specifying the page.
}
Is there anyway to do it?

Answer 1

They are both valid approaches to returning data, but the first returns a whole html page, for example in response to a #routes.Employees.getAllEmployees reference in your view. The second one returns just a Json content type response, for example in response to a Javascript request or AngularJS $http.get. The methods need to have different names (they can't both be called getAllEmployees). Both of them will have entries in the routes file. They will be different entries the way you have written them, so perhaps something like:
GET /employee controllers.Employees.getAllEmployees
GET /api/employee controllers.Employees.apiGetAllEmployees
(Disclaimer: I haven't done this in AngularJS yet, but the principle should be similar.)