PhalconPHP: content negotiation? - php

Question

Does Phalcon support content negotiation out-of-the-box or is there some easy-to-implement solution? I'm scouring the 'nets and not seeing it.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Short answer is no and thank god for that, or we'd have another 100 bugs for a non-major component :)
You can easily plug an existing library, like Negotiation, into DI and use it later globally throughout the app.
$di->setShared('negotiator', function(){
return new \Negotiation\Negotiator();
});
$bestHeader = $di->getShared('negotiator')->getBest('en; q=0.1, fr; q=0.4, fu; q=0.9, de; q=0.2');
Keep in mind that with the default server config (.htaccess / Nginx) from examples static files will be served as is, without interception by Phalcon. So, to server files from the server it would be best to create a separate controller / action to handle that rather than making all request go through your app.
Edit:
If it's simply about enabling your app sending either xml or json based on the common distinction (header, param, method), then you can easily accomplish it without external frameworks. There are many strategies, the simplest would be to intercept Dispatcher::dispatch(), decide in there what content to return and configure the view and response accordingly – Phalcon will do the rest.
/**
* All controllers must extend the base class and actions must set result to `$this->responseContent` property,
* that value will be later converted to the appropriate form.
*/
abstract class AbstractController extends \Phalcon\Mvc\Controller
{
/**
* Response content in a common format that can be converted to either json or xml.
*
* #var array
*/
public $responseContent;
}
/**
* New dispatcher checks if the last dispatched controller has `$responseContent` property it will convert it
* to the right format, disable the view and direcly return the result.
*/
class Dispatcher extends \Phalcon\Mvc\Dispatcher
{
/**
* #inheritdoc
*/
public function dispatch()
{
$result = parent::dispatch();
$headerAccept = $this->request->getHeader('Accept');
$headerContentType = $this->request->getHeader('Content-Type');
$lastController = $this->getLastController();
// If controller is an "alien" or the response content is not provided, just return the original result.
if (!$lastController instanceof AbstractController || !isset($lastController->responseContent)) {
return $result;
}
// Decide what content format has been requested and prepare the response.
if ($headerAccept === 'application/json' && $headerContentType === 'application/json') {
$response = json_encode($lastController->responseContent);
$contentType = 'application/json';
} else {
$response = your_xml_convertion_method_call($lastController->responseContent);
$contentType = 'application/xml';
}
// Disable the view – we are not rendering anything (unless you've already disabled it globally).
$view->disable();
// Prepare the actual response object.
$response = $lastController->response
->setContent($response)
->setContentType($contentType);
// The returned value must also be set explicitly.
$this->setReturnedValue($response);
return $result;
}
}
// In your configuration you must insert the right dispatcher into DI.
$di->setShared('dispatcher', function(){
return new \The\Above\Dispatcher();
});
Just thought that you can probably achieve the same using dispatch loop events. The solution in theory might look more elegant but I never attempted this, so you might want to try this yourself.