How to append data to a resultset in cakephp 3 - cakephp

Question

I have a simple json view like this
{
"articles": [
{
"id": 1,
"title": "Article one",
},
{
"id": 2,
"title": "Article two",
}
]
}
This results are paginated, and i'd like to append the pageCount to the results, something like this.
{
"articles": [
{
"id": 1,
"title": "Article one",
},
{
"id": 2,
"title": "Article two",
}
],
"pageCount": 5
}
How can i achieve this? i can't append it directly because it's a resultset object.
Should i be doing this in the view/controller/model?
thanks a lot!

Answer 1

The _serialize key
Given that you are using the JsonView and auto-serialization
Cookbook > Views > JSON and XML Views > Using Data Views with the Serialize Key
you can simply add another variable for the view, and mark it for serialization, like
$this->set('articles', $this->paginate());
$this->set('pageCount', $this->request->params['paging'][$this->Articles->alias()]['pageCount']);
$this->set('_serialize', ['articles', 'pageCount']);
Using view templates
If you're not using auto-serialization, but custom view templates
Cookbook > Views > JSON and XML Views > Using a Data View with Template Files
you can make use of the PaginatorHelper in your template and add the data when converting to JSON, like
$pageCount = $this->Paginator->param('pageCount');
echo json_encode(compact('articles', 'pageCount'));