As the title says, I need to create a method in Laravel that works like view('name'), but includes files from another folder.
What's the best way to do this without altering Laravel's core functionality?
I was thinking maybe of extending the functionality but I do not have enough Laravel knowledge to know what's the best place to write the function in and/or the best way.
Created an external .php file that I've included in Laravel's index with the functionality that I need, and it was usable in the .blade.php files as well.
Related
I'm developing an application in Cake that heavily interacts with the filesystem. The basic idea is to monitor and index a folder and it's subfolders and files and save meta data for each file in the database. It's working fine so far, but now I got kind of a problem in understanding the MVC mechanics.
I got this heavy FilesController with a lot of functions checking if a file is up-to-date or if it has moved, updating the database entries and so on... Now I want to call some of this actions from a shell/cronjob and I want to call them in the browser too.
I've heard a lot of people complaining about importing controllers in shells and I think I got the idea why this is a bad idea. But now I want to use the same code that interacts with the FileModel directly in a shell and in a controller. Where to put it? What is best practice in this situation? In a component, loading the model? In the controller, importing it in the shell?
Thanks for your help in advance <3
I got this heavy FilesController with a lot of functions checking if a
file is up-to-date or if it has moved,
Wrong place, heavy controllers are definitely wrong. You want fat models, skinny controllers. If there is logic that extracts meta data I probably would put it into app/Utility/FileMetaData or app/Lib/FileMetaData.php and make it a new class. Depending on what it does you might extend the core class Folder or File.
The processing logic for the meta data and reading the folder should go into a model. The model can be used from the shell like in a controller by using the $uses property with an array of models.
To instanitate that class I would use a helper method (I don't mean a view helper by this!) in the model like getMetaDataReader() that returns the instance. The reason for this is to be able to mock the result of that method call in an unit test. Also, if you ever change the class or constructor args you'll have to change only a single place.
Controllers are clearly wrong in shells. There is no request to deal with. Sure technically you can do the stunt and instantiate them there but it is just wrong and doesn't make any sense. If you think you have to or "need" to do so, something is wrong with your application architecture.
You might want to take a look at my FileStorage plugin as well. You can implement an event listener there and when storing a file have the listener automatically process the the meta data.
I'm using CodeIgniter and I have a few utils that I want each controller (that is, each controller file) to have access to.
The question is: where to put these?
I thought of helpers, but the CI documentation talks only about extending existing helpers, not making your own. I'm sure that doesn't mean I can't make my own helpers, but it does mean I don't know how they should be built (procedural? Methods of the global CI instance? etc)
I also considered hooks, but this is a poor fit I think as I'm not extending core functionality.
Or is there some other way I'm missing?
It's been a while since I've done this but I believe I used two approaches.
Creating a new, custom helper that goes into /application/helpers, following steps noted from this answer: CodeIgniter: Create new helper?
Creating a new library class into /application/libraries which I also activate in the autoload configuration found in /applications/config/autoload.php. This way it's always available to my controllers when I need it. CI has good documentation on this one (http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/general/creating_libraries.html).
I did it simply by adding a file to the application/helpers folder (maybe I created that folder - I can't remember) and then loading them in the usual way.
I tried this somehow, but cannot get around the fact of setting the APPPATH. What I want to do is to use CodeIgniter's libraries and core functions, not the whole MVC model but only the helpers built in.
How can I achieve this? I would like to include some .php file into my files as a bootstrap load and get access to all the functionality there is, from database configs to $this->db->... stuff, but not the "load view" and controller stuff.
Any idea on how to approach this?
I'm developing a app in laravel-4 PHP MVC framework
I'm wanting to develop some kind of utility class, for general coding tasks i carry out.
Such as: image uploading, image re-sizing etc... general application tasks
is it best practice to put all this in the base controller class? im thinking not, or defining a separate
UTILL::UtilityFunction();
// or
APP:UtilityFunction();
I'm not sure of the best way to structure this and keep it within best practice?
You're talking about a helper class, right? You better create classes to do whatever you need them to do, but they need to have a meaning on your app, they need to be specific, there's no problem creating a small class to do some image stuff and another one really small to upload files, but one utility class that does both is not good. Take a look at those articles: http://guru-php.com/blog/2008/08/128003/ and http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nickmalik/archive/2005/09/06/461404.aspx.
Using the same logic: you should add methods to your BaseControllers that are pertinent to all your controllers.
To create your utility classes, you can create a new directory (like app/library), create your classes inside it and add this path to app/start/global.php, in ClassLoader::addDirectories() list, Laravel 4 will autoload them automatically for you. Or you can add them to composer.json, using the autoload/classmap section and then run coposer dump-autoload to autoload them.
straight to the point :
I am using Kohana, and I am looking at another script written in plain PHP. In the script, I have a class ShoppingCart. If I am to convert the script to Kohana, where am I to put the class, its methods and its properties?
Is it in my existing default controller? Or should I put it in a separate controller? Or as noobie as it may sound, will I put it in the model?
That depends on the specifics of the class I suppose. To be honest I don't know anything about Kohana, but there's probably a place for "vendor files" somewhere. Maybe it's best to place it there and write wrapper functions for it in your controller. If the class already integrates well with Kohana you may instead choose to use it as a controller or model directly. Or you might want to take the time to rewrite it to make it work as a controller...
Only you can evaluate the best place for it, there's no hard and fast rule here.
Kohana has a folder for 3rd party libraries. The main one is under system/vendor, you can put it in you application/ as well.
Many PHP class loaders require details like your filename should be the same as the class name (at least that's what I read in the Kohana documentation) if you want the classes to be automatically loaded.
If you need to use 3rd party code in your app it's recommended that you create a folder in your app / module folder called 'vendor' and place all of that code there.
You can then include the files by calling:
include kohana::find_file('vendor', 'filename');
If needs be you can also create a wrapper for the external library, a good example of this is the email helper which uses the 3rd party Swift email library.
If you're porting your own class to kohana then you need to work out what the class will be doing and categorise it accordingly.
If the class will be fetching items from some kind of database then you should make it a model. Libraries are usually sets of code that you want reuse across controllers / models, such as authentication, calendar generation etc. Controllers are used for passing data from models to your views / libraries.
See the docs for more info
As per kohana convention, you should place custom classes in application/libraries folder. However for this, you need to know how to get the class to work after putting it there. If you can't figure that out, you can do anything like putting it in your controller or making another controller of it, etc.