How to change Joomla component's view default format?

Question

I have a custom Joomla 3.4.1 component which has a view that displays data either in JSON format (from views/myview/view.json.php file) or HTML (from views/myview/view.html.php file) format. Is there a way how to change the default view's format from HTML to JSON so that

http://example.com/component/mycomponent/myview

returns JSON data instead of HTML while:

http://example.com/component/mycomponent/myview?format=html

still returns the HTML template of the view?

EDIT:

As far as I get is this router:

function TouristGuideParseRoute($segments) {
  $count = count($segments);
  $parameters = array();
  if ($count > 0) {
    $parameters['view'] = $segments[0];
  }
  if ($count > 1) {
    $parameters['task'] = $segments[1];
  }
  if ($count > 2) {
    $parameters['id'] = $segments[2];
  }
  if ($count > 3) {
    $parameters['format'] = $segments[3];
  }

  if (($parameters['view'] == 'api') && empty($parameters['format'])) {
    $application = JFactory::getApplication();
    $input = $application->input;
    $parameters['format'] = $input->getString('format', 'json');
  }
  return $parameters;
}

which displays JSON format even if URL contains ?format=html because in this router the $application->input is empty (probably populated later on in Joomla request processing chain) and thus $input->getString('format','json') returns json all the time.

Answer 1

If your custom component has a router (as I would assume from your example urls) that is where you'd set the default to be JSON.

In the PARSE function you'll want to set...

$vars['format'] = 'json';

Take a look at this semi-current tutorial on Joomla Docs. Then/Or do something like...

$jinput = JFactory::getApplication()->input;
$outputFormat = $jinput->getString('format', 'json');
$vars['format'] = ($outputFormat == 'json') ? 'json' : 'html';`

Note that I'm using an intermediate variable and checking it against the default (line 2) so that it is constrained to two specific options (a user cant type ?format=blahblah and have the router get messed up with $vars['format'] = 'blahblah'.

Answer 2

In your controller, set your default format manually like this (Joomla 3)

$input = JFactory::getDocument()->input;
$format = $input->get('format','json','STR');
$view = $this->getView($view_name, $format);
$view->display($tpl);

Hope this can help.