I'm building a job site where you have two types of users who sign in i.e job seekers and prospective employers. Now both create their accounts from different sign up pages however they sign in from the same login form and are redirected to their account pages. The thing is that the base account page for each should be different5 obviously however I need it to point under the exact same url i.e www.mysite.com/my-account
What would be the best way to do it, is it possible to choose from within a controllers action what view to use here?
You can render a different view inside the controller with $this->render('path/to/view.phtml');
A cool way could be in the init of your controller you set a different base path for the view according to the type of account $this->view->setBasePath('/path/to/account/type/'); So you don't need to call $this->render(); but the render directly will look into the right folder, if you have one folder per account type
Related
As I understand it the "MVC" came before the web and is often used in Desktop software for example.
If I understand correctly, the Controller runs at the time that the user will click a button and this will trigger an action.
But if we talk about web pages, the scenario is a little different, assuming the user clicks a link then it triggers an action.
But then, came me the doubt, is the home page part of a Controller?
What I mean is, the homepage is not usually performed by a user action within the website is just the home, but noticed that many PHP frameworks use a Controller for the home, is that correct?
Another doubt is in my "home" I have several items, for example:
banners
featured posts
recent posts
Each of these items would have a different Model, can I call more than one Model and a View into the Controller?
Would these be the correct steps? Or most of php frameworks are not strict?
You are completely right and I understand the confusion.
In a pure MVC approach, the Controller only listens to user actions and updates the Model accordingly. The Model then notifies the View (through the Observer design pattern) and the View updates itself, accessing the data it needs from the Model.
This is how it was done before the web, in desktop application, where the Model and the View are running concurrently, and where the Model can notify the View. The Controller doesn't set up the View.
In this pure MVC model, the example you mentioned about the homepage doesn't need a Controller indeed. The View would just render itself, accessing the data it needs through the Model. Controllers are very thin and only listen to user actions and update the Model. That's all they do.
In the web, this model is not possible, and thus there are alternative approaches. The Model can't notify the View as in the pure model, and thus what popular frameworks require you to do, is to set up the View in your Controller. That's why for your example of the homepage you need a Controller, as you will set up your view there with all the data it requires.
However, there is another approach I have been personally writing about, where Controllers don't set up the View which allow you to keep tiny Controllers. You can read about it here: A better OOP approach to building MVC applications
Thus I believe that the homepage shouldn't need a controller action at all. The View should just render itself and access the data it needs to render. The Controller's role is to handle user actions and update the model accordingly, as you said. If it does more than that, it probably violates SRP. The Controller shouldn't set up the View, instead, the View should get its own data from the Model.
I have code that I want to run on every page load, such as looking up menu items, looking up the users details etc. These will be displayed on partial views that make up the main view.
Where do I place this code so that it can fill my partial views with each page load? I know I can just add the code to the top of the partial view itself, but this doesn't really follow the MVC pattern.
Is there a function that is always called that I can hook into in my base controller?
You can create a base viewmodel for the repeated code and make other viewmodels inherit from it.
...such as looking up menu items, looking up the users details etc
You're a bit unclear about the type of information you want to load: in case the info is a view-component then indeed you should create a base-view and inherit from it or include it (composition) in any other view.
But, in case it is "user-information" - the data should live in a model-component that again, may live as "base-model" object that is included in other model components.
I've just started reading up on CakePHP and everything is going pretty good so far, though I have a query on the best way to do the following:
I have a "User" model and a "UsersController" controller.
I currently have a "home" page which is controlled by the home_controller.php (obviously). The home page contains a registration for for a user.
The Question
When the form is posted from the home page, I need to access the User model (from the home controller).
What is the best practice for this task?
If I understand the situation correctly, I would post the form to some function in users controller. Then this function would save the data, or log in, or whatever. Finally make redirect back to home for example.
you can easily share one model across many controllers
var $uses = array('ModelName');
I do that with User Model and
Account Controller (Login, Register, ...)
Members Controller (Search, Listing, Profile, ...)
Overview Controller (Start Page, Home, ...)
for example. they all share the User Model.
I currently have a "home" page which is controlled by the home_controller.php (obviously) What other methods do you have in home_controller, other than index? And in Cake convention, the controller is plural, so: users, categories... Most likely, you are not aware of pages_controller and routing in Cake.
Anyway, yes, you can make a post to any controller (or even to another domain) from any page, just like any regular HTML page. echo $this->Form->create('User', array('controller'=>'users','action' => 'register')); You can read more here: http://book.cakephp.org/view/1384/Creating-Forms
I have an application that when accessed its the main.php controller, which spits out the main_view.php view. Now I was wondering what is the right way to go from this view to another controller to generate the next view. The CI tutorials just talk about going from controller to view not the other way around. I have a form that I need to submit on main_view.php and then generate the next view from a database based on that info.
thnks!
You target controllers and functions in the url like this yoursite.com/controller_name/function_name. so the form on main_view.php can link to any controller/function you want, ie yoursite.com/form_controller/form_processing_function
Use site_url to ensure portability of your application:
echo site_url("controller/method");
See http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/general/helpers.html for more info.
Read this chapter in the user guide:
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/libraries/form_validation.html
I'm new to the MVC pattern but have been trying to grasp it, for example by reading the documentation for the CakePHP framework that I want to try out. However, now I have stumbled upon a scenario that I'm not really sure how to handle.
The web site I'm working on consists of nine fixed pages, that is, there will never exist any other page than those. Each page contains something specific, like the Guest book page holds guest book notes. However, in addition, every page holds a small news box and a short fact box that an admin should be able to edit. From my point of view, those should be considered as models, e.g. NewsPost and ShortFact with belonging controls NewsPostController and ShortFactController. Notice that they are completely unrelated to each other.
Now, my question is, how do I create a single view (web page) containing the guest book notes as well as the news post box and the short fact? Do I:
Set up a unique controller GuestBookController (with an index() action) for the guest book, so that visiting www.domain.com/guest_book lets the index action fetch the latest news post and a random short fact?
Put static pages in /pages/ and in let the PagesController do the fetching?
< Please fill in the proper way here. >
Thanks in advance!
It sounds like you need to look into elements, or else you may be able to embed this into the layout - but its neater to use an element if you ask me, keep the things separate.
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/views.html#elements
These allow you to have create small views that you are able to embed into other views.
You may also need to put some logic into the AppController (remember all other controllers extend the app controller) to load the data required for these views. The beforeRender function should be useful for this - its one of the hook functions cakephp provides, so if you define it on a controller, its always called after the action is finished before the view is rendered.
Something like this in your AppController should help:
function beforeRender() {
$this->dostuff();
}
function doStuff() {
// do what you need to do here - eg: load some data.
$shortfacts = $this->ShortFact->findAll();
$news = $this->NewsPost->findAll();
// news and shortfacts will be available within the $shortfacts and $news variables in the view.
$this->set('shortfacts', $shortfacts);
$this->set('news', $news);
}
If there are models you need in the app controller for use within this doStuff method, then you need to define them within uses at the top of the AppController
class AppController {
var $uses = array('NewsPost', 'ShortFact');
}