I'm having a RESTful Resource Controller with basic CRUD functionality. My pages contain a lot of ajax requests, which make a simple controller extend over 500 lines of code, make it very unclear, complex and confusing (especially with working in a team).
How and where should I declare the ajax methods for my controller? I tried messing with php's include_once and put it in a seperated file in a folder named AJAX but this doesn't seem to me to be the right option. What is adviced for this situation?
if you are working on a fairly big project its better to extend it with concepts behind the domain model in domain driven design, such as services and repositories.
you can read more about it in Domain Model
or for simplicity you can put your ajax.js in public folder and call it with asset() laravel built-in function.
Related
I am thinking about using Symfony to create a RESTful api. I want my app to only accept json and/or xml and just output either. I want my frontend to be completely separate in a separate directory.
Disclaimer: I know most frameworks only claim to be MVC, and that the definition/principles of MVC vary from developer to developer. Therefore, I've laid out my understanding of MVC.
How I picture MVC (taken from Martin Fowler):
Make a strong separation between presentation (view & controller) and domain (model)
Controller and view should (mostly) not communicate directly but through the model.
Have views (and controllers) observe the model to allow multiple widgets to update without needed to communicate directly - Observer Synchronization.
In Symfony, the Controller returns a Response, and there really isn't a View class. They sort of combined the two.
My questions are:
Is it possible to separate the controller into a controller and view?
Can you make the controller not return something?
Possible to not have any html/templates within the app/bundle?
As I stated earlier, I want to keep frontend completely separate, therefore, I wouldn't use twig. I would use JS, SASS, React, etc. for my frontend stuff to make ajax calls to my Symfony api.
What you are trying to do is a pretty standard architecture.
You do not need to use templates but your controllers have to return "something". If you are handling the view in the front-end, this would be just the data needed to create this view, usually in the form of json
Symfony can do this, no problem
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 have searched the web and found only styling code posts. I want to write site using Code Igniter and I wonder how should I maintain my code.
For example:
Should I use one class for static pages and methods for each page or separate file for every static page. Should I use the same file to load dynamic pages or different one?
Can I use some common code and include it automatically to every class?
How can I have lets say header_view footer_view etc and then just load->view('whatever') and footer, header and other files would load automatically. Maybe there is better way to do that?
In generall what are the best practices when coding using CodeIgniter.
You can use one single class for static pages (and use one method for each page).
You can use the same one to load dynamic pages, but it is better IMO to load them with a separate class. It will be easier to maintain later.
Using common code: You can always override the CI_Controller with your own, and instantiating controllers from yours. Here is an example about how to do it.
You can load multiple views in a single controller function. A view doesn't have to be a full html document. You can also load the same view multiple times (for example in a loop).
Best practices: CodeIgniter is an MVC framework. IMO, MVC is a best practice. Always use the framework's documented features if they are suitable for what you want to achieve (CodeIgniter's documentation is very good. That link is momentarily offline, so please try this one).
Codeigniter is a MVC based framework, MVC is basically used for organizing your code, so at last its up to you how you are going to use it so ease you on the long term.
Basically when I design large projects in codeigniter I tried to to make unit of functionality at one place lets take example of any simple users, messages based project.
I tried to make functionality by grouping main topics, in this example user will be a controller, in that controller there will be methods like login, register, edit, listing, forgot_password now I'll create single model with all the methods which will give data for these above methods. by using this methods our urls will be also meaningfull like /user/login, /user/register etc
like that if its messages I will create controller message and add all related methods in it so that my related functionality will be in a single group.
as far as the question of static pages you can also group them in a single controller if they can be a part of group.
you can also use codeigniter's caching technique for static pages so that your pages will load faster
I'm thinking of re-working my MVC before I get to far along with it. At the moment it uses a sinle controller which takes the user input and determines the model. The model has maby differ methods which I call actions, because one is called automatically. The model loads its view file, which again holds many different methods. The model can set properties which can be used in the view. Then the controller calls th template classwhich parses the output for display.
Is this the bst way to do it?
Or should each different part (news, contact, about) have its own controller, which loads a specific model and view. Essentially, instead of grouping methods into a single file, it uses multipe files.
I'm kind of lost as to how I should do it.
Cheers
Start using a MVC that works and is well-known like in Symfony or Cake. From that you will decide:
what do to in your own, knowing the best practices;
to drop your own if you feel like you can save time by using theses.
If you are thinking of advancing your own MVC model, like #e-satis have said, you will need to experience what is happening in already developed systems. However, as based on my experience in designing MVC model and determining what is there in opensource community, I stick back to my own MVC for two good reasons. One reason is the flexibility of customization and the other is own MVC privacy.
I used the following approach for MVC design pattern.
A Router.php file identifying user-request urls. This router will be able to fetch controllers and include the file and call the controller default method.
The loaded controller is also able to load other controllers if required to function. This is done using a global method, where all controller Class will extend to a MainController Class which is able to call to other controllers.
I do use a global registry to set and get variables from one controller to the other.
The Models are used to get the Data from Table, and most of my Models will represent Database functions which includes CRUD (Create Read Update Delete). So that a controller can easily manipulate database table data using a model.
Naming conventions in all controller, models, and views is also important, if you want to system to be more intelligent to identify the required action knowing the file name.
I use the Views separately for each type of controller. And these views will be sent to a Master Template View file.
Same as models, the controller will be able to set Views to Master View.
There are other customizations which you can do, like applying security methods before calling a class, or after calling a class/controller/model/view etc.
This is done by the MainController, which it will always look into a folder with autoload class which states what files should be loaded before and after of different actions during the process of building the content and delivering the output.
MVC is not a small scale idea, but it is a design idea which can always be developed. There are so many PHP MVC open source frameworks to be found if you know how to search the major search engines like google.com
But I do advice you that, MVC is not a good solution if you are simply developing a small dynamic website, as it will consume more time in developing compared to developing small websites. MVC is ideal, if you have business logic and needs system automation in order to avoid most routine tasks of developing, and like that I would say MVC is most ideal for larger applications.
The model loads its view file
The Controller should act as a Mediator between the Model and the View.
The Model shouldn't be aware of the way the view renders it, and also the View shouldn't be aware of any kind of logic of the Model.
In theory, if your MVC is well structured, you should be able to represent the same Model with different types of Views (HTML, XML, JSON for example).
Build FrontController which parses request uri and decides which controller to load and which method to run. With .htaccess rewrite all request to index.php
//index.php
class FrontController{
function run(){
//parse request uri here /comment/new
//load controller comment
//run controllers method new and pass some request attributes
}
}
// ../controllers/comment.php
class Controller_Comment extends Controller{
function new($request){
//do stuff here
}
}
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.