I'm new to Laravel. Maybe my questions are a little bit silly... Sorry...
The goal: There are some API resources and I need to take some selective data from them (It will be needed to make extra API queries from data which I already got before to get full sets of required values) and fill my DB tables with it (some as one to many, some as many to many).
The problem: What Laravel tools do I need to use to reach this goal? Is it factory, seeder or somewhat else? In addition I don't understand where I have to write the code for getting data from an external API and where (in terminal manually?) I have to initiate my DB tables filling.
Maybe someone could at least advise what to learn in the Laravel official documentation at first or some helpful reference to some article from which I will be clear how this process may be implemented in Laravel. I mean the tools' set and order to use them. Not the finished code implementation of course.
I will be grateful for any help. Thanks. Sorry for my non native English.
Well, there are multiple ways of achieving what you want:
One is to create a command where you are going to write code to fetch this data (using curl or any similar way). And then you manually run the command when you want with whatever arguments you want.
Other one is to use the previous step and schedule it to run in a desired time with desired arguments.
Other possible way is, if the external API can send data to a specific URL when some action occurs in that system, then you can create a normal Route and the API should point to this Route in your Laravel. It will be specific and only work for this API.
Other one is to fetch data based on an event. Let's say that, if a user register, when this is successful, you are going to fetch User info from an external API using their email (let's say you want to get a profile picture from an API and the only way to get the user picture is sending the user's email). You can do so using Events.
There are more ways, but if you don't give too much context, then this is what I can share with you !
Related
I have a question in regards to design/refactoring an existing app. My existing app is in Laravel. We have models like User, which you would imagine be linked to the Users table in the database.
Now I am planning to move this User table to an external database, which can be reached from my application with an API call.
In all the Different parts of the application there are calls to the Current User Model like User::find(Id). This wont work anymore since now Users table is not there anymore in the database.
1st Question: how to accomplish the above by changing the model reference to call an API instead of a DB table. Is there any design pattern that can be leveraged so that I dont have to change all the User::find in all of the applications.
2nd Question: How would you handle places where the table is directly referenced by joins. Like table.x = User.x
Any help/guidance would be appreciated. Thanks
What it sounds like you need is a layer that sits over your models (perhaps something similar to the Repository Pattern). This way you can abstract out your data access layer (currently Models) and make it easily swappable for another implementation (such as API requests). This is a bit more work in Laravel 4 than 5, and may possibly require significant refactoring.
As for your second question, your API will have to govern more advanced queries and have an endpoint/method for them.
I haven't seen anyone doing this, so i'm bit confused if it can be good approach.
Some small system with login. And i have simple group management withing that system. I want to be able to easily set and execute some triggers depending of action and on group in which user belongs.
First idea that came to my mind is to have in groups table 4 fields for triggers, named like this:
add_triggers (when user is added to trigger this)
delete_triggers (when user is removed from a group)
login_triggers (when user logs in to be triggered)
logout_triggers (when user logout to be triggered)
Now i'm wondering how to relate that to an actual trigger code?
Should i have separated class triggers that should receive just "names" of triggers and in that class to hold all possible trigger's code? So that i'm able to execute that in some kind of a loop?
Does anyone have any other idea how to organize that?
p.s. those groups are quite an important part of a system. Most of the things should be based on them. They even has extending tables for complex type of groups.
thnx
What your looking for is Laravel Events.
I would definetly recommend making a class that the event calls rather than writing procedural style code.
Event::listen('auth.login', 'LoginHandler#onLogin');
I'm new to CodeIgniter but want to perform best practices from the start. I have a simple authorization call that needs to be able to be called from several controllers. Hence I'm thinking it should be placed in either a library or a helper function. The call would take the user's id and a required authorization "level", grab their information from the DB, make sure they have that level of access, and return true or false.
Let's say:
auth($user,5)
My first instinct is to make this a library, but it seems odd to place it directly in a library because there are DB calls, which I would think should go in a model. It appears that only the Session library contains calls directly to the DB (for when database session storing is turned on).
So, I could access the DB directly within the library, or try to link to an external Model. Looking it up on the web, I'm only finding people who have trouble with both routes. Before I dive too deeply into getting one of them to work, I'd appreciate any opinions out there on how to go about this.
Thanks,
Jeremy
It seems like that is a model function. At least put it there until later in development.
If you later find there is a need for multiple models which would require duplicating the function, then would be a good time to move it to a helper or library.
What's a good way to pass a list of items 2-3 items to a method in my controller?
I was thinking of just using the URL.... like so:
http://myserver/myapp/mycontroller/mymethod/parm1/parm2/listitem1/listitem2/listitem3
Is there a better way to do this? This data is not coming from a form, but rather from a database query and I'm building a hyperlink with it.
I guess the only part that bothers me is that I won't know in advance how many items I have when i'm parsing this url.
Its possible that I'll get none, or all 3 or some value in between. So the method that then has to parse this url will just keep looping until uri->segment() returns false, indicating that it's hit the first empty uri segment.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
EDIT 1:
Just in case it wasn't clear, my model is getting the data from the database and will also build the list.
The question is really about parsing an undetermined number of uri segments.
Just wondering if there's a better way to do this.
Thanks!
EDIT 2
Here's some more information to help you understand my MVC app. I don't think my issue is the way I've organized my code as far as who is doing what.. But just in case it helps...
I have methodA in my model that queries database and passes back to my controller listitem1, listitem2 and listitem2.
The controller then builds a string that represents a URL like:
http://myserver/myapp/mycontroller/methodB/parm1/parm2/listitem1/listitem2/listitem3
Then the view display a hyperlink using the url above.
When the user clicks on this hyperlink, it calls methodB.
In methodB, I since I don't know the number of items, I will just loop through all segments until I hit my first false.
As far as why I need to do this / what I'm doing... here's some background info:
I'm query a database for a list of ports on a switch that are considered trunks - ones that should not be modified.
this is what method A does.
methodB run a command against a switch and it returns a bunch of data back. the view that displays the data from methodB will allow the end user to make further changes to the switch. before I display the data from methodB, i want to filter out the list of ports I got from methodA so they cannot be tampered with.
Hope this helps.
Edit 3
I need both methodA and methodB because they serve two different purposes. methodA displays summary data about ports from my database. Think of methodA as a function that shows documentation about the switch. The view for methodA in turn, provides "live" links to communicate with the actual switch - this is where methodB comes in. methodB is triggered by one of those live links and it goes and gets a list of ports - similar to methodA - except that it represents what actual, and it doesn't include user defined information about the port.
I guess I can have methodB communicate with my database and filter its data before it displays, but if i want to treat these two functions as separate APIs... aka - one set of functions get data out of the database, the other set is a tool to communicate with switches... - then i don't think i want one talking directly to the other. I would like the GUI to tie them together. In fact, i have created two separate models and controllers for what I'll call the database interface, and then the switch interface.
So far, i think the forms idea is the most elegant solution.
Thanks everyone, for reading.
place number of listitems as parametr 3
../mymethod/parm1/parm2/numberofitems/listitem1/listitem2/listitem3
and put 1, 2, or 3 as needed. In case when 0 put nothing - null, however make sure that controller would know what to do if null happend - do not expect items.
If the data is coming from a query it should be within a model in CodeIgniter if you wish for your application to truly MVC compliant. This might mean a restructuring of your application, which may be difficult but it would really benefit you in the future to create a model for all your database queries.
You can read up on codeigniter models here:
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/models.html
And you can read up on the database class here: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/database/index.html
I really suggest you do this.
If your data is already coming from a model you can call it by including the model:
$this->load->model('model_name');
$response = $this->model_name->model_function(parameters);
Edit: This would also solve the issue of an unknown number of list items as you can simply parse the response returned from the model function instead of trying to figure out a uri hack.
After reading all of the other answers + edits over, that's definitely not the way you want to do it.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your comments, here's the issue: The list of ports is domain data stored on your server. So why then, are you going to pull that data out, send it to the presentation layer, and show it to the user who will send it right back to the application? Skip the middle-man and have "MethodB" get that data.
Your "MethodB" should get this information itself before processing what it needs to do - domain data stays in the domain layer, and the view never sees any of that information directly (the user would see a link directly to "MethodB")
Alternatively, you could do this all in one query if your DB schema is conducive to such a join.
Has anyone implemented something similar?
The problem I have is the fact that we're not using REST. The current plan is the following:
Create a controller called sync($modelName, $action) and throw all requests at that.
Create an interface called "syncable" and force models to implement it.
How it works:
GET http://localhost/sync?modelName=User&action=update&first_name=Peeter
This will look for a model named UserModel that implements the syncable interface. If found, update its parameters and update(); to db.
The syncable interface is to enable per-record actions. E.g. "Only record owner can update this record" or "Only admin can delete this record".
I wrote a fully function REST API framework into symfony 1.4. It supports JSON and JSONP. I've open sourced it, so you're welcome to use it. We're using it in production with a lot of traffic, so it's pretty stable and we've had great feedback from the consumers. It's really flexible and very fast to write API methods. We also have a documentation page that allows you to make test queries. It's one of the best API docs I've seen.
https://github.com/homer6/blank_altumo
See this (below) for an example of an API controller. This contoller only shows GET, but PUT, POST and DELETE are fully implemented.
https://github.com/homer6/blank_altumo/blob/master/htdocs/project/apps/api/modules/system_event/actions/actions.class.php
If you need help getting it going, I'm willing to spend a few minutes to explain its design or get it working for you.
Hope that helps...
I had the same issue with an app I'm working on, so I implemented a ChangeTracker that subscribes to my observable properties, and tracks any changes made. Then, at any later point, I can call something like:
viewModel.changeTracker.commit();
which is responsible for massaging my change objects into a format that the server understands, and ships it off for processing.
Here is a little fiddle demonstrating the idea. http://jsfiddle.net/ggoforth/pCX8c/2/
Note: I've had a string of days where I've been working till 3am so there may be a better way of doing this, and I'm just to exhausted to realize it :)