How to solve some problems in symfony 2? - php

I started to explore the world of Symfony 2 now and face with some realy strange problems i would not think they can occure in such a professional framework. I will show you the problems i face one by one:
1) How to get the recent actionName?
I found only this solution which is imho semiprofessional:
$request->attributes->get('_controller');
// will get yourBundle\Controller\yourController::CreateAction
$params = explode('::',$request->attributes->get('_controller'));
// $params[1] = 'createAction';
$actionName = substr($params[1],0,-6);
Is this serious, i have to do some extra-work to get it, why.. Is there a better solution? Creating a base controller class with a method e.g. getActionName(), but why do i have to implement such basic functionality in a framework. Is there a other way?
2) When i forward a request the code in 1) will not work.
$request = $this->container->get('request');
$getParameterList = $request->query->all();
if (!empty($getParameterList['mode'])
&& $getParameterList['mode'] == 1) {
return $this->forward('AcmeDemoBundle:Routing:lawyersearch', array(), $getParameterList);
}
The reason why it will not work is that "AcmeDemoBundle:Routing:lawyersearch" is a other format than when i came directly from a route. Second problem here is that i have to forward the GET-paramters as well(i think POST too). Is there a way that i do not have to care about it?
3) How to use a default template without using this annotation:
/**
* #Template()
*/
public function indexAction()
{
return array();
}
I do not want to have above all my methods this annotation; i know i can put it on the top of the class definition. Is there a way to achieve this? The only solution i see, is to write a BaseController that determines by a method out of the module/controller/action the default template.
4) I found classes that use public attributes e.g. Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\Length with e.g. public $max;
How to solve this? Very strange because this is not professional to use public attributes.
I hope someone has easy solutions for this. It would be realy dissapointing if Symfony 2 has so much strange behaviour in so much cases. 4 strange things i 2 days since i began to explore it. It gives me the feeling that there is much more when i continue.
Please confirm that there are no other solution by the framework or which is the solution. Thank you

1) By accessing the '_controller' parameter of the request, you are delving into the internals of Symfony2. They rarely document anything related to this outside of routing. You should use controller actions more definitively, don't try to automate too much on this level.
2) Symfony2 can't account for highly dynamic controllers. You know it is possible to call ->forward more than once, and within the same controller action. This creates a nesting nightmare that the Symfony developers weren't prepared to deal with.
This is one of the reasons $request = $this->container->get('request'); is now deprecated in favour of $stack = $this->container->get('request_stack');. Because forwarding needs to create new internal requests.
3) Also deprecated. Symfony2 best practices now discourages the use of #Template() with empty parameters because of the potentially volatile development of actions/templates. You are supposed to explicitly define which template to use, if you use one at all. This comes in handy when dealing with data-only responses. You wouldn't want your responses to use a template automatically as this would result in unexpected behaviour in your design.

1) Use Constant: __FUNCTION__
http://php.net/manual/en/language.constants.predefined.php
2) Try setMethod on $request:
$this->get('request')->setMethod('POST');
3) I do not know, probably not possible.
4) Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\Length is one of constraints:
http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/validation.html#constraints

Related

What is a macro in laravel Macroable

please can anyone help me understand what a macro is in Laravel Macroable trait, reading this documentation https://laravel.com/api/5.4/Illuminate/Support/Traits/Macroable.html only tells me how to use but why do I use it, what is it meant for.
It is for adding functionality to a class dynamically at run time.
use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
Collection::macro('someMethod', function ($arg1 = 1, $arg2 = 1) {
return $this->count() + $arg1 + $arg2;
});
$coll = new Collection([1, 2, 3]);
echo $coll->someMethod(1, 2);
// 6 = 3 + (1 + 2)
echo $coll->someMethod();
// 5 = 3 + (1 + 1)
We have 'macroed' some functionality to the Collection class under the name someMethod. We can now call this method on the Collection class and use its functionality.
We just added a method to the class that didn't exist before without having to touch any source files.
For more detail of what is going on, please check out my article on Macros in Laravel:
asklagbox - blog - Laravel Macros
It allows you to add new functions. One call to ::macro adds one new function. This can be done on those of the internal framework classes which are Macroable.
This action of adding the function to the class is done at run time. Note there was/is an already existing perfectly good name for this action, which isn't the word "macro", which I'll explain at the end of this post.
Q. Why would you do this?
A. If you find yourself juggling with these internal classes, like
request & response, adding a function to them might make your code more
readable.
But as always there is a complexity cost in any
abstraction, so only do it if you feel pain.
This article contains a list of the classes you can add functions to using the static call "::macro"
Try not to swallow the word macro though, if you read that article - if you're like me it will give you big indigestion.
So, let's now add one extra function to an internal framework class. Here is the example I have just implemented:
RedirectResponse::macro('withoutQuery', function() {
return redirect()->to(explode('?', url()->previous())[0]);
});
This enables me in a controller to do this:
redirect()->back()->withoutQuery();
(You can just do back() but I added redirect() to make it clear).
This example is to redirect back and where the previous route was something like:
http://myapp.com/home?something=something-else
this function removes the part after '?', to redirect to simply:
http://myapp.com/home
I did not have to code it this way. Indeed another other way to achieve this is for me to put the following function in the base class which all controllers inherit from (App\Http\Controllers\Controller).
public function redirectBackWithoutQuery()
{
return redirect()->to(explode('?',url()->previous())[0]);
}
That means I can in any controller do this:
return $this->redirectBackWithoutQuery();
So in this case the "macro" lets you pretend that your new function is part of an internal framework class, in this case the Illuminate/RedirectResponse class.
Personally I like you found it hard to grasp "laravel macros". I thought that because of the name they were something mysterious.
The first point is you may not need them often.
The second point is the choice of the name ::macro to mean "add a function to a class"
What is a real macro?
A true macro is a concept unique to Lisp. A macro is like a function but it builds and returns actual code which is then executed. It is possible to write a function in other languages which returns a string which you then execute as if it was code, and that would be pretty much the same thing. However if you think about it you have all of the syntax to deal with when you do that. Lisp code is actually structured in lists. A comparison might be imagine if javascript was all written as actual json. Then you could write javascript, which was json, which returned json, which the macro would then just execute. But lisp is a lot simpler than json in terms of its syntax so it is a lot easier than what you just imagined. So, a true lisp macro is one of the most beautiful and amazing things you can encounter.
So why are these add-a-function things in laravel called macros?
That's unknown to me I'm afraid, you'd have to ask the author, but I asked myself what they really do and is there already a name for that.
Monkey Patches
TL;DR laravel's ::macro could more accurately be described as monkey patch
So if using laravel ::macro calls, I personally decided to create a MonkeyPatchServiceProvider and put them all there, to reduce unnecessary confusion for myself.
I realise the name might sound a bit derogatory, but that's not intended at all.
It's simply because there's already a name for this, and we have so much terminology to deal with why not use an existing name.

Controller as Service - How to pass and return values in an advanced case?

Using Symfony, I am displaying a table with some entries the user is able to select from. There is a little more complexity as this might include calling some further actions e. g. for filtering the table entries, sorting by different criteria, etc.
I have implemented the whole thing in an own bundle, let's say ChoiceTableBundle (with ChoiceTableController). Now I would like to be able to use this bundle from other bundles, sometimes with some more parametrization.
My desired workflow would then look like this:
User is currently working with Bundle OtherBundle and triggers chooseAction.
chooseAction forwards to ChoiceTableController (resp. its default entry action).
Within ChoiceTableBundle, the user is able to navigate, filter, sort, ... using the actions and routing supplied by this bundle.
When the user has made his choice, he triggers another action (like choiceFinishedAction) and the control flow returns to OtherBundle, handing over the results of the users choice.
Based on these results, OtherBundle can then continue working.
Additionally, OtherOtherBundle (and some more...) should also be able to use this workflow, possibly passing some configuration values to ChoiceTableBundle to make it behave a little different.
I have read about the "Controller as Service" pattern of Symfony 2 and IMHO it's the right approach here (if not, please tell me ;)). So I would make a service out of ChoiceTableController and use it from the other bundles. Anyway, with the workflow above in mind, I don't see a "good" way to achieve this:
How can I pass over configuration parameters to ChoiceTableBundle (resp. ChoiceTableController), if neccessary?
How can ChoiceTableBundle know from where it was called?
How can I return the results to this calling bundle?
Basic approaches could be to store the values in the session or to create an intermediate object being passed. Both do not seem particularly elegant to me. Can you please give me a shove in the right direction? Many thanks in advance!
The main question is if you really need to call your filtering / searching logic as a controller action. Do you really need to make a request?
I would say it could be also doable just by passing all the required data to a service you define.
This service you should create from the guts of your ChoiceTableBundleand let both you ChoiceTableBundle and your OtherBundle to use the extracted service.
service / library way
// register it in your service container
class FilteredDataProvider
{
/**
* #return customObjectInterface or scallar or whatever you like
*/
public function doFiltering($searchString, $order)
{
return $this->filterAndReturnData($searchString, $order)
}
}
...
class OtherBundleController extends Controller {
public function showStuffAction() {
$result = $this->container->get('filter_data_provider')
->doFiltering('text', 'ascending')
}
}
controller way
The whole thing can be accomplished with the same approach as lipp/imagine bundle uses.
Have a controller as service and call/send all the required information to that controller when you need some results, you can also send whole request.
class MyController extends Controller
{
public function indexAction()
{
// RedirectResponse object
$responeFromYourSearchFilterAction = $this->container
->get('my_search_filter_controller')
->filterSearchAction(
$this->request, // http request
'parameter1' // like search string
'parameterX' // like sorting direction
);
// do something with the response
// ..
}
}
A separate service class would be much more flexible. Also if you need other parameters or Request object you can always provide it.
Info how to declare controller as service is here:
http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/controller/service.html
How liip uses it:
https://github.com/liip/LiipImagineBundle#using-the-controller-as-a-service

Autoloading Required Classes from User Input in PHP

Let me start off by saying I'm an intermediate level PHP coder who's learning OOP. I've got a site running, but I would like to break my code up to implement a more flexible design pattern...and because OOP is just plain awesome.
In my original code, I used switch statements to call functions that correspond with the user request.
$request = (string) $_GET['fruit'];
switch ($request) {
case 'apply':
Get_Apple();
default:
Error_Not_A_Fruit();
exit;
}
This makes it highly inflexible and requires me to change the code at multiple locations for adding new options the user may request.
I'm thinking about changing it to a Polymorphic class call. I'm using composer, so I've got my Objects setup to autoload with PSR-4 standards. So the answer seems simple, if the user request is "apple," I could create
$request = (string) $_GET['fruit'];
$product = new Product\$request;
But, if a user manually enters something that doesn't exists...say "orange," what method would I use to white list the user's input? Like I said, this is my first venture into OOP and would love to pick up design standards that you guys use. I'm thinking encapsulating the block inside a try{} & catch(){} block, but is that the way it should be done?
Any advise would be greatly appreciated :)
Cheers,
Niro
Update: I'd like to make it clearer because it may not have been before. I'm looking for the approach to doing this in such a way that one could add new Objects of Subclass Product (implementing a Product Interface). That way I can add different Product types without changing code everywhere.
Well, you can always use class_exist('Product\\Apple').
class_exists takes 2 arguments:
Class Name (full, with namespace)
Boolean value, whether to try and autoload the class or not. Default is true.
The function returns a boolean.
So you write
$fullClassName = "Product\\$request";
if(class_exists($fullClassName )) {
$product = new $fullClassName();
}
else {
//error here
}

getCategories method calling itself?

I'm a little confused as to what is going on here, it looks to me like a method is calling itself? I'm trying to learn about Magento's models. I was working my way back from a helper (catalog/category) and I got to a call on this method "GetCategories". I don't know whats going on here. If anyone could shed light on this code snippet I greatly appreciate it.
getCategories ( $parent,
$recursionLevel = 0,
$sorted = false,
$asCollection = false,
$toLoad = true
){
$categories = $this->getResource()
->getCategories($parent, $recursionLevel, $sorted, $asCollection, $toLoad);
return $categories;
}
Not much to add to #hakra's answer. Just a portion of Magento-specific logic.
So to work with Magento models you should know, that Magento has 2 types of Models: normal models, and resource models (we can call assign Blocks to the models too, as a view models - but that is more connected to the V part of MVC).
The resource models were created as a DB adapters that contain only DB-related logic, and often are connected to some DB table, hence contain the logic for CRUD operations with that table. So you'll see smth like this regularly - for the simplicity someMethod is a part of normal model, but since it contains DB-related logic, all the implementation of the method was moved to the resource model, so the body of someMethod in the regular model will be something like that:
public function someMethod($args)
{
return $this->getResource()->someMethod($args);
}
It is hard to say for the code you've posted. Even both methods share the same name (getCategories) it must not mean that they are of the same class or even object.
If you want to find out you would need to compare:
var_dump($this === $this->getResource());
Apart from that, it is also common in programming recursion that a method calls itself, hence recursion. However for that chunk of code, it would run against the wall.
So technically speaking I would do the assumption that in your example this is not the exact same object method.
Please take note that this answer is independent to Magento, it's just how PHP works generally.

CakePHP 2.0 Object not Array

I am currently a beginner in CakePHP, and have played around with CakePHP 1.3, but recently CakePHP 2.0 has been released.
So far I like it but the only thing is being a pain is the fact that it doesn't return Objects, rather it just returns arrays. I mean, it hardly makes sense to have to do $post['Post']['id']. It is (in my opinion) much more practical to just do $post->id.
Now after Google I stumbled upon this link, however, this kept generating errors about indexes not being defined when using the Form class (guessing this is because it was getting the objectified version rather than the array version).
I am following the Blog tutorial (already have followed it under 1.3 but going over it again for 2.0)
So, anyone know how to achieve this without it interfering with the Form class?
Hosh
Little known fact: Cake DOES return them as objects, or well properties of an object, anyway. The arrays are the syntactical sugar:
// In your View:
debug($this->viewVars);
Shwoing $this is a View object and the viewVars property corresponds with the $this->set('key', $variable) or $this->set(compact('data', 'for', 'view')) from the controller action.
The problem with squashing them into $Post->id for the sake of keystrokes is Cake is why. Cake is designed to be a heavy lifter, so its built-in ORM is ridiculously powerful, unavoidable, and intended for addressing infinity rows of infinity associated tables - auto callbacks, automatic data passing, query generation, etc. Base depth of multidimensional arrays depends on your find method, as soon as you're working with more than one $Post with multiple associated models (for example), you've introduced arrays into the mix and there's just no avoiding that.
Different find methods return arrays of different depths. From the default generated controller code, you can see that index uses $this->set('posts', $this->paginate()); - view uses $this->set('post', $this->Post->read(null, $id)); and edit doesn't use $this->set with a Post find at all - it assigns $this->data = $this->Post->read(null, $id);.
FWIW, Set::map probably throws those undefined index errors because (guessing) you happen to be trying to map an edit action, amirite? By default, edit actions only use $this->set to set associated model finds to the View. The result of $this->read is sent to $this->data instead. That's probably why Set::map is failing. Either way, you're still going to end up aiming at $Post[0]->id or $Post->id (depending on what you find method you used), which isn't much of an improvement.
Here's some generic examples of Set::map() property depth for these actions:
// In posts/index.ctp
$Post = Set::map($posts);
debug($Post);
debug($Post[0]->id);
// In posts/edit/1
debug($this-viewVars);
debug($this->data);
// In posts/view/1
debug($this-viewVars);
$Post = Set::map($post);
debug($Post->id);
http://api13.cakephp.org/class/controller#method-Controllerset
http://api13.cakephp.org/class/model#method-Modelread
http://api13.cakephp.org/class/model#method-ModelsaveAll
HTH.
You could create additional object vars. This way you wouldn't interfere with Cake's automagic but could access data using a format like $modelNameObj->id; format.
Firstly, create an AppController.php in /app/Controller if you don't already have one. Then create a beforeRender() function. This will look for data in Cake's standard naming conventions, and from it create additional object vars.
<?php
App::uses('Controller', 'Controller');
class AppController extends Controller {
public function beforeRender() {
parent::beforeRender();
// camelcase plural of current model
$plural = lcfirst(Inflector::pluralize($this->modelClass));
// create a new object
if (!empty($this->viewVars[$plural])) {
$objects = Set::map($this->viewVars[$plural]);
$this->set($plural . 'Obj', $objects);
}
// camelcase singular of current model
$singular = lcfirst(Inflector::singularize($this->modelClass));
// create new object
if (!empty($this->viewVars[$singular])) {
$object = Set::map($this->viewVars[$singular]);
$this->set($singular . 'Obj', $object);
}
}
}
Then in your views you can access the objects like so:
index.ctp
$productsObj;
view.ctp
$productObj->id;
All we're doing is adding 'Obj' to the variable names that Cake would already provide. Some example mappings:
Products -> $productsObj
ProductType -> $productTypesObj
I know this is not perfect but it would essentially achieve what you wanted and would be available across all of your models.
While I like the idea Moz proposes there are a number of existing solutions to this problem.
The quickest one I found is https://github.com/kanshin/CakeEntity - but it looks like you might need to refactor it for 2.x - there might even already be a 2.x branch or fork but I didn't look.
I also ran this question couple of time in my head. Now a few Cake based apps later, I see the benefit to be able to branch and merge (am, in_array etc.) result sets more conveniently with arrays than using objects.
The $Post->id form would be a sweet syntactic sugar, but not a real benefit over arrays.
You could write a function that iterates over your public propertys (see ReflectionClass::getProperties) and save it in an array (and return the array).
If you have access to the class, you can implement the ArrayAccess Interface and easily access your object as an array.
P.S.: Sorry, i've never used CakePHP but i think object-to-array conversion doesn't have to be a framework specific problem

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