MVC form data submission to controller - php

Question

I am managing to deploy a very simple implementation, containing a registration form and for demonstration purposes, I have chosen to use the MVC pattern.
My slight issue is that when I press the submit button, I want the submitted data to be handled by the suitable method of the controller.
For instance:
within the view part, I declare the form like this :
<form action="controller/validate" method="post"/>
I am assuming that this is a routing-related thing, but I am curious whether another way can be suggested.
--
Regards,
Theo

Answer 1

A router can be as simple as a switch statement instead of a full blown router for the small sites:
switch($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) {
case 'controller/validate':
$view = new \Views\User\Registration();
$controller = new \Controllers\UserRegistration($view);
$method = 'validate';
break;
default:
$view = new \Views\Error\NotFound();
$controller = new \Controllers\Error($view);
$method = 'notFound';
break;
}
echo $controller->$method();
Also note that instead of doing a relative URL based on the current path you often really want to do a relative URL to the document root:
<form action="/controller/validate" method="post"/>
Note the leading slash.
The above is just a simple (untested) example of semi pseudocode

Answer 2

Usually, you would make your controller accessible through a route (like POST /register). A controller action is assigned to this route in a bootstrap file. Some pseudo-code:
$framework->route('GET', '/register',
'RegistrationController::action_form');
$framework->route('POST', '/register',
'RegistrationController::action_submit');
Another aproach would be mapping routes directly to controllers (some frameworks do this, I believe Kohana is one of them) like this:
Route: /register/submit
Resolves to: RegisterContoller::action_submit()
Management of request method (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE in standard HTTP) happens in the action methods.