Ascertaining controller and action from my own class in CakePHP 2.4 - php

Question

I have created a class of my own which I'm using from methods which override those in a couple of Cake's caching-related classes in order to customise the filenames of the files that CacheHelper saves. (The filenames sometimes need to include the type of user so that logged in users don't see cached versions of what non-logged in users would see and vice-versa, for example.)
My class is called MyCacheUtility and resides in app/Lib/Cache.
In this class, I need to ascertain what the controller and action are. What is the best way of doing so, and can I use Cake's CakeRequest class?
So far, I have included App::uses('CakeRequest', 'Network');, and...
I can't use $this->params('controller') as my class isn't a controller or component:
Error: Using $this when not in object context
File: /srv/www/app/Lib/Cache/MyCacheUtility.php
Line: 20
I can't use CakeRequest::param('controller') as (if I understand correctly) CakeRequest's methods are not designed to be used statically:
Error: Using $this when not in object context
File: /srv/www/cakephp/lib/Cake/Network/CakeRequest.php
Line: 864
The contents of my class:
App::uses('CakeRequest', 'Network');
class MyCacheUtility {
/**
* Sets the cache file’s filename to include references to user type
* and organisation (depending on the current controller and action)
* so that both logged-in users from different organisations and visitors
* get the right stuffs.
*/
public static function getPrefix() {
$prefix = '';
switch ('controller') . '/' . 'action') { // this is where I need the controller and action
case 'user_lists/organisation_lists':
$prefix .= MyCacheUtility::sessionDataToFilename('currentUser.organisationName');
break;
}
$prefix .= MyCacheUtility::sessionDataToFilename('currentUser.type');
return $prefix;
}
/**
*
*/
private static function sessionDataToFilename($sessionValue) {
if (CakeSession::read($sessionValue)) {
return strtolower(Inflector::slug(CakeSession::read($sessionValue))) . '-';
}
}
}
Update:
I found I wasn't able to pass the CakeRequest object from CacheDispatcher to MyCacheUtility class, and I think this is because CakeRequest has not been instantiated at the point at which CacheDispatcher does its stuff?
I do now have what I set out to do working. I'm passing Cake's $path variable through to my method and manually doing some processing based on this:
class MyCacheUtility {
public static function getPrefix($path) {
$pathParts = explode('/', parse_url($path, PHP_URL_PATH));
$prefix = '';
if (count($pathParts) > 1) {
if ($pathParts[1] == 'shared_lists') {
$prefix .= MyCacheUtility::sessionDataToFilename('currentUser.organisationName');
}
}
$prefix .= MyCacheUtility::sessionDataToFilename('currentUser.type');
return $prefix;
}
private static function sessionDataToFilename($sessionValue) {
if (CakeSession::read($sessionValue)) {
return strtolower(Inflector::slug(CakeSession::read($sessionValue))) . '-';
}
}
}
I was hoping to be able to directly apply Cake's own logic, but this seems to be doing the job okay so far.

Answer 1

Why do you need a library class at all? Extend the CacheHelper and use your customized cache helper via aliasing as $this->Cache in the views. To modify the file names it should be enough to override CacheHelper::_writeFile().
If you want to modify the caching itself write a new cache engine or extend an existing one to modify it's behavior. Your question does not really contain much information about why and what exactly you want to do so I can't give a better advice.
The CakeRequest object should be nearly everywhere present, so just pass it to the constructor of your cache lib. But like I said, architecturewise I doubt your approach is the best path to go. Show your cache lib code?
new MyCacheLib(CakeRequest $request);
Edit:
Write your custom Cache dispatcher or extend the existing one instead. You'll get the request object passed to it by default. Take a look at the CacheDispatcher filter. No need for a lib class here.
A more simple approach might be to write a custom cache engine and configure the helper to use that, same for the cache dispatcher filter. This way you can share the code. Or use a trait (php 5.4) to share the path building logic between the filter and the helper.