JSON for DATA and HTML for presentation.
Pass the data from json which is faster doing json parsing than html parsing and let javascript fetch that data on frontend and manipulate the DOM and do the presentation.
JSON is just a textual presentation of structured data. A client naturally needs to have a parser to process data but virtually all languages have JSON parser functions. It is much more efficient to use JSON parser than to use HTML parser. It takes little footprint. Not so with an HTML parser.
In PHP, you just use json_encode($data) and it’s up to the client on the other side to parse it. And when you fetch JSON data from a web service, you just use $data=json_decode($response) and you can decide how to use data like you would do with variables.
Suppose you develop an app for a mobile device, why do you need the HTML format when mobile apps rarely use the web browser to parse data? Many mobile apps use JSON (most common format) to exchange data.
Considering that mobiles are often on metered plans, why do you want to use HTML that takes much more bandwidth than JSON?
Why use HMTL when HTML is limited in its vocabulary and JSON can define data? {“person_name”:”Jeff Doe”} is more informative than HTML can provide about its data since it only defines structure for HTML parsers, not define data.
JSON has nothing to do with HTTP. You can put JSON in a file. You can use it for configurations. Composer uses JSON. You can use it to save simple variables to files as well.
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This all depends on the purpose of the API, but generally what you describe is a pretty strong violation of separation of concerns:
In a modern application, API code should be responsible for data, and client code should be responsible for presentation.
When your API returns HTML, you are tightly coupling your data and presentation. When the API returns HTML, the only thing you can do (easily) with that HTML is display it as some part of a larger page. From a different angle, the only thing the API is good for is supplying your page with HTML. Plus, you’ve spread your HTML across both the client and server code. This can make maintenance a headache.
If your API returns JSON, or some other form of pure data, it becomes much more useful. The existing app can still consume that data, and present it appropriately. Now, though, other things can use the API to access the same data. Again, too, maintenance is easier — all the HTML resides in one place, so if you want to re-style the whole site, you have no need to change your API.