Direct echo in Controller - bad parctice?

Really the only exception to that is sending back json or other data. Then you'd echo it from the controller and not use a view (in most cases)

I'm glad someone with more experience in CI than me said this. That's the only time I've echo'd directly from a controller, and was wondering if it really needed its own view for JSON output.

Developing mostly on Ubuntu 14.04 in a VM. Probably insane, but it works.