I'm new with Kohana and finding their documentation to be lacking (lots of incomplete writings, lots of broken links, etc.). I just want to create a route like so:
Route::set('test1', 'blah/<id>')
->defaults(array(
'controller' => 'Blah',
'action' => 'foo',
));
So if the URL is localhost/blah/8342342 it will run through this controller and action. The problem is I get a 404 error. If I change the URI in the Route::set to be blah/foo/<id> it works fine. I only want the /blah/ directory though, not 'blah/foo'. Is this possible or do you need to have both the controller and action in the URL?
Another question, does the first directory in your URI (in this case /blah) HAVE to match the controller name? For example, if the first directory in the URI is "blah/", does that mean my controller must be named "Blah.php"? From my tests it seems that this is the case, but I don't know why it would be set up that way. What if I wanted the URI "contact/" to go through controller Blah?
Related
I have a stat, in which many can exist for an improvement, which is one model in my about page. I initially built the page as one giant controller having silly actions like "action_editimprovementstat".
So I tried to move things into directories, so rather than everything being in "[...]/controller/about", I moved things into there perspective folders, for example: "[...]/controller/about/improvement/stat"
I changed the regex of the route, so the controller would accept slashes, which judging by the debugger, worked, because now the controller text will show up as "about/improvement/stat", unfortunately it still tells me the requested url can't be found.
So, I ask, what is the simplest way to have a hierarchical controller structure?
Here is an example of controller URLs that I would prefer:
/about
/about/internal
/about/external
/about/improvement
/about/improvement/stat
Those would also have actions, so for example:
/about/improvement/edit/6
/about/improvement/stat/delete/7
I'm willing to compromise if there are issues with ambiguity.
(Btw, I think I could manage a way if I did my own routing through a single controller, but I'm wondering if there is a better way, or if that way is well documented [so I can learn from another's experience].)
You can simply add additional variables or constant values to the route if you live.
The Kohana documentation even shows a concrete example, where an extra directory is added in front of the route, which can have only one of two given values:
Route::set('sections', '<directory>(/<controller>(/<action>(/<id>)))',
array(
'directory' => '(admin|affiliate)'
))
->defaults(array(
'controller' => 'home',
'action' => 'index',
));
Of course you can add values in the back or inbetween as well. The only requirement is that your route will always result in at least a controller and an action. But they don't actually have to exist in the url. You can specify routes that match other values and have a constant value for controller and/or action, like this:
Route::set('search', ':<query>', array('query' => '.*'))
->defaults(array(
'controller' => 'search',
'action' => 'index',
));
The greatest pitfall: It is important to understand that routes are matched in the order they are added, and as soon as a URL matches a route, routing is essentially "stopped" and the remaining routes are never tried. Because the default route matches almost anything, including an empty url, new routes must be place before it.
Maybe that is what's going wrong now?
Anyway, rather than adding trickery to match slashes, I'd rather create a route that accepts a large number of optional variables, so you could read 'urlpart1' to urlpartX' from your generic controller. That is, if you need to. The setup, of course, is to let you create different controllers for different urls, so you don't need a humongous controller with a gigantic method to decide what to do based on the url parts.
Ever since I learned Kohana, my programming experience has been greatly improved because prior to Kohana I never gave a moments thought to how my urls were constructed. In the MVC world using Pretty URLs makes you really think about what you want to do and how to go about it.
In my opinion by looking at what you are wanting to do in the examples above, it seems to me that you are thinking backwards. You said the URLS that you preferred are: /about /about/internal /about/external /about/improvement /about/improvement/stat
It seems to me that "about" is really an action, not a controller. The url "/about/" is pretty confusing because it doesn't tell me what I'm getting information about but we can let that one slide because it's probably about the site in general. "/about/internal" is pretty clear but in a lot of ways you are trying to write your urls so that they read in proper English. In reality I would write them as: /about, /internal/about, /external/about, /improvement/about, /improvement_stat/about
I'm not sure why you are resisting have several controllers unless perhaps you are setting up your controllers as template controllers and maybe you think you have to do that for each one. You dont. In general I create a controller named "page" which is my template controller. Then all other controllers extend the page controller. I can define constants and other variables in the page controller that can be used in all the controllers that extend the page controller.
But if you are really resisiting writing multple controllers, you can always write specific routes that will let you reach any controller and action that you want. For example I used a route for a comparison where I wanted up to 4 id's passed into my route. I wrote that route like this:
Route::set('thing_compare', 'thing/compare/<thing1>/<thing2>(/<thing3>(/<thing4>))')
->defaults(array(
'controller' => 'thing',
'action' => 'compare'
));
Note that thing3 and thing4 are in parens which means they are optional. Then in my controller I can get those values by doing something like:
$thing1 = $this->request->param('thing1');
But going back to the examples you gave, just write the routes something like this (assuming your controller is named "about":
Route::set('about_internal', 'about/internal')
->defaults(array(
'controller' => 'about',
'action' => 'about_internal'
));
Route::set('about_external', 'about/external')
->defaults(array(
'controller' => 'about',
'action' => 'about_external'
))
Personally I would avoid setting routes like this and really reconsider how your urls need to be setup so that it creates a sensible design strategy.
If I defined 2 controllers, A.php and B.php, and in each controller I defined an index action,
how should I define Route::set in the bootstrap.php file?
The default route should do just fine:
Route::set('default', '(<controller>(/<action>(/<id>)))')
->defaults(array(
'controller' => 'welcome',
'action' => 'index',
));
Please read the documentation: http://kohanaframework.org/3.2/guide/kohana/routing
That default route will match both controller '/a' and controller '/b', and execute the index action if no other action is specified in the URI.
I have read the documentation and it's not completely clear when and why you would want to create a Route entry.
Basically, a Route entry is needed if you have a URL that does not conform to the normal /controller/action structure. If you have created controller A and controller B both with index actions, you don't need to add routes to bootstrap.php if you are always going to access those actions using the standard URL syntax:
http://www.example.com/A/index
http://www.example.com/B/index
You could leave off "index" since it is the default action if none is specified.
Let's say you want controller A to be the default site controller, meaning that you don't want to have to use A in the URL, you want to use the action right after the domain:
http://www.example.com/index
Then you do need a route to tell Kohana that any URL that is not matched by any routes you have created (or if you have none) should be handled by your default route. You would create this route in bootstrap.php:
Route::set('default', '(<controller>(/<action>(/<id>)))')
->defaults(array(
'controller' => 'A',
'action' => 'index'
));
This says that if a user goes to http://www.example.com, Kohana will use the index action of controller A. If the user goes to http://www.example.com/foo, then Kohana will use the foo action of controller A. Any URL that does not match any other controller will go to the A controller. If a user requests an action that A does not handle, he'll get a 404 exception.
You still have the B controller, so that will work fine without any route. If the user goes to http://www.example.com/B/index, Kohana knows about the B controller in the app so it will go to the index action there.
Your problem may be in .htaccess file in kohana folder.
I needed to change the "RewriteBase" to the Kohana folder ('base_url' from Kohana::init in bootstrap.php file), otherwise I landed in '404 - no object found'.
Then the default route should do just fine.
Trying to learn Kohana, coming from Asp.Net MVC 3. In MVC I am used to the default route (very similar to the default route in Kohana) working like this:
The default route matches any of these:
/
/Home
/Home/Index
I expected it to be the same in Kohana, but it seems all it matches is this:
/
Here's my setup in bootstrap.php:
Kohana::init(array(
'base_url' => '/kohana',
'index_file' => FALSE
));
Route::set('default', '(<controller>(/<action>(/<id>)))')
->defaults(array(
'controller' => 'home',
'action' => 'index',
));
So if I enter localhost/kohana in the address bar I get to the view called by controller home and action index (action_index). But if I enter localhost/kohana/home/index I get an error saying the object doesn't exist.
Why is this? Shouldn't I be able to enter controller and action in the url and get the correct routing? So basically I have no idea how to enter URLs to get to an action method...
Sorry if this is a stupid newbie question, but I can't figure it out Googling and looking at the Kohana docs... I've been sort of spoiled by the fact that Asp.Net MVC routing always just worked, so I never had to really learn about it...
Rename example.htaccess to .htaccess, open it and change the line RewriteBase / to RewriteBase /kohana/. Windows explorer will probably not allow for a file without the name, so you have to use another file manager (Total Commander for example).
I'm not really even sure how exactly to search for this but I have a URL
site.com/forum/controller/action
Where forum is a plugin and I currently have it routing to the plugin forum successfully with
Router::connect('/forum', array('plugin' => 'forum', 'controller' => 'home', 'action' => 'index'));
However, I want to add a route that will connect any top-level subdirectory to the plugin forum. For example,
site.com/fish/controller/action
site.com/bird/controller/action
would both route to the forum plugin. Similarly,
site.com/bird
would also route to the forum plugin. This is the best I have been able to come up with and it has no effect (I get a "FishController could not be found":
Router::connect('/*/:controller/:action/*', array('plugin' => 'forum'));
The closest answer I could find basically says this might not be possible? http://cakephp.1045679.n5.nabble.com/Routes-with-wildcards-missing-controller-errors-td1263632.html
EDIT: After some more trial & error I tried this:
Router::connect('/:site/:controller/:action/*', array('plugin' => 'forum'));
And it works. Could someone explain this?
The documentation at http://api.cakephp.org/class/router#method-Routerconnect does a great job at explaining this.
What you've done is created a custom parameter. Cake uses an array to keep track of the parameters and that how it know which controller, action and other parameters have been passed. The Router will convert any URLs with 3 slashes (/) to $param['site'], $param['controller'] and $param['action'].
From your controller, you can retrieve the value of :site by using $this->params['site'].
I have a set of rather static pages wich I moved to the views/pages folder. The resulting *.ctp files are editable by my customer through CushyCMS (simplistic cms perfect for dummy proof editing). However CushyCMS generated preview links that obviously don't take CakePHP into account. I would like to solve this little problem with custom routing, but can't get my head around the details..
How can I dynamically connect the url http://localhost:8888/cake125/app/views/pages/test.ctp to http://localhost:8888/cake125/pages/test?
I added the following in my routes.php:
Router::connect('/pages/test.ctp', array(
'controller' => 'pages',
'action' => 'display', 'test'));
This works ok for connecting: http://localhost:8888/cake125/pages/test.ctp to http://localhost:8888/cake125/pages/test. Somehow following snibbet doesn't do the trick:
Router::connect('/app/views/pages/test.ctp', array(
'controller' => 'pages',
'action' => 'display', 'test'));
Ideally I'd like to have a single Router::connect statement which connects all /app/views/pages/*.ctp requests to the right place.
Finally I would also like to correctly handle google search results for the old version of the site. Like so:
Router::connect('/test.html', array(
'controller' => 'pages',
'action' => 'display', 'test'));
This works ok but I'd rather have anypage.html connect to /pages/anypage. Can anyone help with this?
Thanks in advance!
First, by virtue of having Cake in a subdirectory (/cake125), I think you may need to connect the /cake125/:controller/:action, rather than how you have it. Not 100%, though; Cake might be robust enough to handle that use case. If you have weird errors, I'd check that.
On with my answer:
I think you are somewhat misunderstanding how the Router class works. You connect URLs, not relative filesystem paths, using Router::connect. By default (which you may have erased, but it's pretty simple to fix), Cake will route requests to /pages/* to the PagesController::display() function, passing it one argument (the action listed in the http request).
So, to have the pages controller map /pages/one to the app/views/pages/one.ctp element, simply make sure that the following (default, i.e. Cake normally has this setup) line is in the routes config (and make sure that lines above it do not match that pattern):
Router::connect( '/pages/:action', array( 'controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'display', :action);
This should ensure that PagesController::display( $action ) is invoked during the request, which is (I think) what you're after.
If your CMS generates preview links that you want to correctly re-route, I'd suggest adding a new route. E.g., if your CMS generates links like http://somesite.com/cms/preview/newly_edited_file, you can route it like this:
Router::connect( '/cms/preview/:action', array( 'controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'display', :action );
For your second question: have a default rule in your routes (make it the last rule, and have it match *). It will then be configured to route all not found requests to your controller/action pair as requested. Try this:
Router::connect( '/:action', array( 'controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'display', :action );
Major caveat this will break your existing routes. You will need to manually add an entry for each of your existing controllers (Router::connect( '/users/:action', ...etc...). If you google around you can find some clever solutions, such as having that list generated at runtime for you. But you will need to address "normal" routing, once you've added that catch-all (and make sure your catch-all is at the end of the routing file).
Also, if you want to parse URLs like /test.html, simply add a call to Router::parseExtensions(...) so that Cake will register .html as an extension for it to parse. Check the manual on that function for more info.
As others have pointed out how CakePHP Router works, I'll leave it at that.
For the second part of your question (handling old links), I'd suggest adding this to the end of your Routes list:
Router::connect( '/:page',
array (
'controller' => 'pages',
'action' => 'display',
),
array (
'pass' => array ('page'), // to pass the page as first arg to action
'page' => '.+\.html$', // to verify that it ends with .html
)
);
You'd unfortunately have to parse out the .html yourself though
How can I dynamically connect the url http://localhost:8888/cake125/app/views/pages/test.ctp to http://localhost:8888/cake125/pages/test?
Well, the thing is, you don't. :-)
What I mean by that is, you do not connect a URL to another URL. What you really do is, you make certain URLs trigger certain Controller functions (or Actions for short) which in turn may (or may not) render certain Views. By default it's all straight forward through naming conventions. The URL /foo/bar triggers the Controller Foo's Action bar and renders the View /views/foo/bar.ctp.
The PagesController is already a special case. The URL /pages/foo triggers the Controller Pages's Action display, passes it the parameter foo, which renders the View /views/pages/foo.ctp. Notice the difference in which Action is triggered.
Since there are a lot of steps inbetween, it's not a given that a certain URL corresponds to a particular file on the hard disk. The URL /foo/bar might trigger Controller Baz' Action doh which renders the View /views/narf/glob.ctp.
This makes translating http://localhost:8888/cake125/app/views/pages/test.ctp to render the file /views/pages/test.ctp somewhere between an uncertainty and a pain in the rear.
Edit:
Having said that, the particular problem in your case is that the base URL is http://localhost:8888/cake125/app/. You can invoke a Cake app from http://localhost:8888/cake125/, http://localhost:8888/cake125/app/ or http://localhost:8888/cake125/app/webroot. All three URLs will be handled by the same file cake125/app/webroot/index.php, if you use one of the shorter URLs the request will be "forwarded" (rewritten) via .htaccess rules.
So the Route you're trying to connect, the Route that Cake sees, is actually /views/pages/test.ctp.
Actually, my mistake, this might not be the problem, but it depends on your .htaccess files and server configuration.
It doesn't seem to make much sense in a CMS though, since every newly created page would need its own rule. So I'd recommend against trying to do so and rather hack Cushy to properly construct URLs using the Cake HtmlHelper or Router::url(). Failing that, connect all URLs with a catch-all rule to some Action, parse the URL there and render the correct View "manually".
Alternatively, use .htaccess files and rewrite rules to actually rewrite the URL into a normal Cake URL, so Cake doesn't have to worry about it. As said above though, this can be very fragile.