I’ve been building an application with Kohana 3.3, and recently switched development from Coda 2 — a text editor — to PhpStorm 6 — an IDE.
PhpStorm 6 has been very handy in pointing out potential code smells; it prompted me to move from attaching data to views with the __set($key, $value) magic method to instead using the bind($key, $value) method.
Another thing that PhpStorm 6 is complaining about, is that I’m declaring fields dynamically.
I have subclassed Controller_Template, and I’m attaching my view to my template like this:
public function action_index() {
# Create the view
$view = View::factory('project/list');
# Attach the view to the template
$this->template->content = $view;
}
Apparently, content is declared dynamically. I’ve been checking up the class heirarchy, and I can't find the content property declared anywhere (hence why it’s dynamic, I suppose). Is this a code smell? Is dynamic declaration bad? Can I explicitly declare the content property somewhere?
As it is, the code works. I just want to understand why PhpStorm is giving me a notice, and whether or not I’m going about things the right way.
The advantage and disadvantage of PHP is dynamic typing. Its convenient in some cases, but irritating in another. You shown here irritating example. You know, that the $view is object which inherit from View (for example), so you know which functions you can use. If you don't mess anything, there will be View type object always.
Phpstorm don't have this information and thats why you see warning. He wants you also to be careful with this code but in this case you cannot do nothing. You cannot also cast $view to View like in Java:
$this->template->content = (View)$view; //impossible :(
$view and $this->template->content are dynamic typing variables and you cannot change it. Just take care to not assign another type to your variable and everything should work fine.
I wanted to add some info to the answer Kasyx is giving. Everything he says is correct but there is an alternative to set variables in kohana if you hate dynamic typing or like some clarity in what your views are doing. (Template is just another view ;) )
You can also set variables in views with the set() function (docs) eg:
$view->set('foo', 'my value');
Related
please can anyone help me understand what a macro is in Laravel Macroable trait, reading this documentation https://laravel.com/api/5.4/Illuminate/Support/Traits/Macroable.html only tells me how to use but why do I use it, what is it meant for.
It is for adding functionality to a class dynamically at run time.
use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
Collection::macro('someMethod', function ($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.
Ok, the subject makes no sense so Ill try to better describe it here.
Zend Frame work in use here. And I have run into a problem passing variables to my views, well the views included into the "top.phtml" that make up the template. What I am trying to do is implement a breadcrumb concept. The bread crumb file is included into the top.phtml before the content view file. So the breadcrumb variable isn't defined as far as the breadcrumb file is concerned.
I can print_r my array of settings for the breadcrumbs within the controllers view, no problem so it is working I know that much, just anything above that view in particular in the order of things can't get the variable. So I guess what I am looking to have answered is is there a means off passing a variable to the overall scheme of things similar in concept to
$this->view->variable_name = blah;
where something as high as the top.phtml can pick it up for use?
You may be looking for Placeholders.
Example:
Setting a placeholder value from a controller:
$this->view->placeholder('some_placeholder_name')->set('blah');
Setting a placeholder value from a view
$this->placeholder('some_placeholder_name')->set('blah');
Retrieving the placeholder value in a view script or layout:
$value = $this->placeholder('some_placeholder_name');
Placeholder content is rendered towards the end of your application execution so the value set in your controller should be available in your top level top.phtml view script.
I think this will work:
$this->layout()->breadcrumbs = ...
And then print $this->layout()->breadcrumbs in your top.phtml.
Zend Layout
After sending hours trying to get placeholder() to work with partialLoop(), I finally gave up and hacked a fix to pass vars to a partial:
$vars = (array) $this->getVars();
foreach ($this->rows as $row) {
$partialVars = array(
'row' => $row,
'vars' => $vars,
);
echo $this->partial('row.phtml', $partialVars);
}
ugly, but it worked.
+1 for everyone for giving me a clue, however none of the above worked well in my favor. However between them all, they lead me towards finding my answer which is
Zend_Registry
In my Controller I built my array and passed it to Zend_Registry like
$breadArray = array(
array("icon"=>"i_robot", "href"=>"systems/"),
array("href"=>"metrics","text"=>"Metrics")
);
Zend_Registry::set('breaded_crumbs', $breadArray);
Then in my breadcrumb.phtml which is loaded before the content and view I used
print_r(Zend_Registry::get('breaded_crumbs'));
to see if it was working, and it gave me the array's so I for anyone in the future looking to extend a variable outside of the view itself, the registry seems to be the way to go. I tried placeholder and layout, both gave me errors about not being something or another, and when I got them to work in part I wasn't getting what I was expecting.
Hey guys, I've used the Symfony admin generator for a module.
Everything is working, but when the form for my model is instantiated, I need to pass in my own option.
I could do this myself by overriding the executeNew, executeCreate functions in myModuleActions.class.php (which extends myModuleAutoActions).
But I was hoping for a neater solution?
Perhaps overriding one of the configuration classes is the way to go. I basically need to add the current sf_user object ($this->getUser) as an "sf_user" option for the form, to avoid using sfContext in the myModuleForm.
Any ideas?
Welcome to Stack Overflow, jolly18.
I would just use sfContext. For example, in my app, I have a subform that creates a new Note object and assigns the user to it. In my form's configure() I have:
$new_note->setAuthor(sfContext::getInstance()->getUser()->getUsername());
I see the book calls this "The fastest but ugly way" because it makes "a big coupling between the form and the context, making the testing and reusability more difficult." But in practice... this works well and I can move on.
if module was generated using admin-generator :
in apps/backend/modules/books/actions/actions.class.php
modify: in
executeEdit(){
//leave rest unchanged
$values=array('activity_id'=>$activity_id, 'book_id'=>$book_id, 'todo_id'=>$todo_id, 'user_id'=>$this->getUser()->getGuardUser()->getId());
$this->form = new TabelBooksForm($TabelBooks, $values);
}
modify: in
executeNew(){
//leave rest unchanged
$values=array('activity_id'=>$activity_id, 'book_id'=>$book_id, 'todo_id'=>$todo_id, 'user_id'=>$this->getUser()->getGuardUser()->getId());
$this->form = new TabelBooksForm(array(), $values);
}
in TabelBooksForm.class.php
public function configure()
{
if ($this->isNew()) {
$this->setWidget('book_id', new sfWidgetFormInputHidden());
$this->setDefault('book_id', $this->getOption('book_id'));
$this->setWidget('activity_id', new sfWidgetFormInputHidden());
$this->setDefault('activity_id', $this->getOption('activity_id'));
$this->setWidget('todo_id', new sfWidgetFormInputHidden());
$this->setDefault('todo_id', $this->getOption('todo_id'));
}
}
i've been facing this problem for a while but symfony always surprises me with some neat code that i was not aware of.
I assume you'r using sfPropelPlugin, quite standar, if you checkout the code generated in cache (note: this code will be available once you tried to open the module from the browser, so firts try to look at it so we dont get in trouble :P) you may see something like:
cache/{application_name}(generally frontend or backend)/dev(enviromnemt)/autoModule_name( look here for the module)/:
lib
action
The action folder contains an action.class.php file that defines all actions generated by the generator (executeNew, Edit, Create, Update, etc). If you look a the implementation of executeNew and executeEdit, you can see that they ask a configuration instace the actual form to display, here is an example:
public function executeNew(sfWebRequest $request)
{
$this->form = $this->configuration->getForm();
$this->PaymentOrder = $this->form->getObject();
}
The configuration var containt an instance of a configuration class defined in the lib folder i mentioned earlier. That class tweaks the form to fit the object needs (generally by setting a fresh object instance).
So here comes the magic, the classes you see in your module extend from those in cache, so by pure logic, if you modifi the getForm() method in the main module/lib folder to fit your needs, you wont have to hack forms by getting user valuer where you shouldn't.
Hope this helps!
I'm creating my own script using the CodeIgniter MVC framework. Now, i want users to easily modify the site functionality and adding their own without modifying the code which i've already written.
How do i make my site pluginable ?
EDIT: The users would be the site admins. Not the end user. Basically just like drupal or joomla. Want the admin to be able to create/add plugins to extend site functionality.
There may be a better way that's specific to CodeIgniter, but this is what I would do:
First, create functions for various "hook points" in your code. Say, a function named PreArticle that you call in your code, before an article is displayed.
Allow the user to write code like this:
addHook_PreArticle('funcToCall');
function funcToCall( &$articleText ) {
$articleText = str_replace('Hello', 'World', $articleText);
}
addHook_PreArticle is a function you've defined, which would add the passed string to some internal list. Then when the PreArticle function is called, each of those functions are executed, passing in any appropriate parameters that you define.
Many CMS's Like Joomla and Blogs like Wordpress use variable function names:
$function="phpinfo";
$function();
You could load this into an array to create a list of functions that can be overridden.
That's a perfect case to use the Observer Pattern.
http://devzone.zend.com/article/5
I'm using CodeIgniter, and will likely use their template library as I want to keep things extremely simple to use. The content for the template variables will come from the database, but I want the business admins to know what content areas are available. Basically the names of the parameters when they choose a specific template. For instance, Joomla uses an extra XML file that defines each area, whereas Wordpress uses comments within a page template to inform the system that the PHP file is a template. I like the Joomla approach because you don't have to parse the PHP file to find the areas, but I like the Wordpress approach because you don't have an extra XML file associated with every template. Are there other approaches that I'm missing?
I think the nicest way would be to add a small hack to the template parser class. The code looks quite readable and clean in system/libraries/Parser.php. You could insert a hook in that class that can be used to keep track of the variables. I don't know, if it works, but here's a snippet:
class CI_Parser {
var $varCallback;
function setVarCallback($callbackFunction) {
$this->varCallback = $callbackFunction;
}
...
function _parse_single(...) {
$callback = $this->varCallback;
$callback($key);
}
...
//Somewhere in your code
function storeVarName($variableName) {
// Persist the variable name wherever you want here
}
$this->parser->setVarCallback('storeVarName');
You could do this directly in the controller:
// in the controller
print_r($data);
$this->load->view("main", $data);
Or a little more rudimentary, but you could pass to the template a PHP array of variables (or an object):
// in the controller
$data = array();
$data["namespace"] = array(
"title" => "My website",
"posts" => array("hi", "something else")
);
$this->load->view("main", $data);
And then in the view, have a flag to print_r the namespace to show all the vars available, so that business admins know exactly what to use.
// in the view
if(isset($namespace["showAllVars"])) print_r($namespace);
One option would be to call token_get_all on the PHP file (only when your business admins are loading it up), and parse the output of that.
The best approach, in my opinion, is to keep the variable definitions in another place (such as a database table, or a separate file). This will help with testing (i.e., a programmer can't just remove a tag and it's gone) and making sure things are still working as you move on with the application development in time.
Another advantage is that your application logic will be independent from the templating engine.
On a side note, if you expect a lot of traffic, you may consider using smarty instead. We have done extensive testing with most of the templating engines around and smarty is the fastest.