title: How to save JSON data in cakephp
body: <p>I'm using CakePHP v2.2.1 stable. I have a <code>UsersController</code> with the action <code>add()</code>. I'm trying to send the user info via ajax (from the home page to <code>/users/add</code>) and save the data. My code is something like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>// /app/View/Pages/home.ctp
  &lt;?php
     $data = array('User' =&gt; array('username' =&gt; 'vegeta_super_sayajin',
      'password' =&gt; 'over9000!', 'email' =&gt; 'vegeta@supersayajin.com',
      'profile_pic' =&gt; '/home/pics/scouter.jpg', 'firstname' =&gt; 'Vegeta',
      'lastname' =&gt; 'Vegeta', 'level_id' =&gt; '9001'));
  ?&gt;
  &lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
      var data = &lt;?php echo json_encode($data); ?&gt; //convert $data into json format
      $.ajax({url: '/users/add', data: "data="+data, type: 'post'});
  &lt;/script&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How do I receive this data in the <code>UsersController</code>, so that I can process and save it?</p>
  
  <p>Currently, I'm trying:</p>
  
  <pre><code>// /app/Controller/UsersController.php
  function add() {
      if($this-&gt;request-&gt;is('post') {
          //returns "Error: [object Object] in logfile
          $this-&gt;log($this-&gt;request-&gt;data);
      } else {
          $this-&gt;Session-&gt;setFlash(__("The user could not be saved :("));
      }
      $this-&gt;autoRender = false;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><code>$this-&gt;log($this-&gt;request-&gt;data)</code> returns <code>Error: [object Object]</code> in the <code>/app/tmp/logs/error.log</code> file, and this user info does not exist in any of <code>$this-&gt;request-&gt;params</code>'s indexes. All my googling so far has returned only complicated cakephp v1.3 techniques. How is this done in cakephp v2.2.1?</p>