I am new to Zend and am working on a project that requires three contexts for a particular action. There is the standard context that will normally be used, an AJAX context for AJAX calls, and finally a print-friendly context. The goal is for each of these to have their own view, so the view files used would be something like:
/action_name.phtml
/action_name.ajax.phtml
/action_name.print.phtml
I read http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.controller.actionhelpers.html and came up with:
public function init()
{
// add any necessary context switching here
$contextSwitch = $this->_helper->getHelper('AjaxContext');
$contextSwitch->addActionContext('history', 'html')
->initContext();
//need to add another context for the print view
$this->_helper->getHelper('contextSwitch')->addActionContext('history','print')->initContext();
}
The first two lines I am convinced works, but I am not sure if I am going about the print context the right way, since in the examples the second parameter is normally a file type, like JSON, XML, HTML, etc. Am I going about things the right way or is there something else I should be doing?
It's everything in the documentation. If you want custom contexts, you have to add them first:
$this->_helper
->getHelper('contextSwitch')
->addContext('print', array(
// context options go here
))
->addActionContext('history', 'print')
// more addActionContext()s goes here
->initContext();
What you might do instead of using a context for the print view is just have a parameter in the URL like /print/1. Then in the controller action, check to see if that parameter is true, and if it is, render the "print" view script instead of the regular view script.
Related
I'm working with a PHP MVC Framework. Works really well. I like the separation of the business layer (model) with the business logic (controller). But i just stumbled upon a problem. Here's the thing:
Suppose i navigate to the following url:
http://localhost/user/showall/
In this case the userController.php is called and within that file there is a method showallAction() which gets executed.
In the showallAction() method i simply do a request to a model which gets all the users for me. Something like this:
public function showallAction()
{
// create userModel object
$users = new userModel();
// get all users and assign the data to a variable which can be accessed in the view
$this->view->users = $users->getAllUsers();
// render views
$this->view->render();
}
So this method gets all the users, assigns the data returned from the userModel to a variable and i can easily work with the returned data in my view. Just a typical MVC thing.
Now here comes the problem.
I also need to create a native iphone variant. Ofcourse the looks will be totally different. So all i actually want to do is to request this url:
http://localhost/user/showall/
And that it just gives me the array (in json format) back. So i can use that for the mobile development.
But this obviously can't be done right now because the showallAction() method assumes that it is for web browser display. It doesn't echo JSON formatted, instead it simply assings the array of users to a variable.
So that means i have to create another method "showallMobileAction()" in order to get the data, but specifically for the mobile device. But this is not an elegant solution. I'm sure that are better ways...
Anyone any idea how can i solve this problem??
In your situation i would modify the routing mechanism.
It would be useful, if you could add extension at the end of URL, which represents the format you expect, like :
http://foo.bar/news/latest >> HTML document
http://foo.bar/news/latest.html >> HTML document
http://foo.bar/news/latest.rss >> you RSS feed
http://foo.bar/news/latest.json >> data in JSON format
It's a simple pattern to recognize. And you can later expand this to add .. dunno .. pdf output, or Atom feeds.
Additionally , two comments :
Model is not a type of objects. Instead it is a layer, containing objects responsible for business logic, and objects responsible for data storage/retrieval.
View should be a full blown object, to which you bind the domain objects (objects responsible for business logic).
You could pass parameters to your url:
/user/showall/json
and get the third URL segment with a custom function or a built-in one. For instance, with CodeIgniter: $this->uri->segment(3).
Some frameworks will pass the additional parameters to your method. Just try this with the URL I wrote above:
public function showallAction()
{
print_r(func_get_args());
}
I'm not familiar with PHP MVC but in general terms I'd use the "accepts" HTML header field to request the response in either "text/html" or "text/json", the controller would check for the accepts type and return the response accordingly.
I am new to Zend FW. I am looking to write a simple feedparser in a controller named Feedparsercontroller's indexAction. but i want to display the parsed feed output as a widget on my index page. how can i drive the output/ variable data to my indexview?
The below is my parser.
class FeedparserController extends Zend_Controller_Action {
public function init() {
/* Initialize action controller here */
}
public function indexAction() {
$feedUrl = 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/ZendScreencastsVideoTutorialsAboutTheZendPhpFrameworkForDesktop';
$feed = Zend_Feed_Reader::import ( $feedUrl );
$this->view->gettingStarted = array ();
foreach ( $feed as $entry ) {
if (array_search ( 'Getting Started', $entry->getCategories ()->getValues () )) {
$this->view->gettingStarted [$entry->getLink ()] = $entry->getTitle ();
}
}
}
}
i want to implement the same with my login , register controllers as well.
Perhaps I'm not understanding your question fully.
But, it seems the best approach here would be to create a separate feed controller that is solely responsible for the business logic associated with feeds (retrieving, massaging, setting to view, etc).
Then, create a partial which contains javascript code to call the feed controller, which then outputs the widget you're desiring. This does a few things very well.
It centralizes feed-related logic
It allows you to place the feed widget wherever you want
It is a SOA approach which is generally a good thing
Hope this helps!
I think the best logic with widgets is ajax.
Use some js widgets libraries (maybe jQuery ui for example), then make these widgets be loaded by some ajax queries, returning HTML, this allow you as well simple widgets reloading behviours (without relaoding the whole page).
In the server Side you'll need to allow your controller/Action to be called via ajax requests and to send only html snippets (not a whole page with all the layout).
To do that check ContextSwitch and AjaxContext Action Helpers. You will tell your FeedparserController that the index action can be called with /format/html in an XMLHHTTPRequest, and that in this case the view helper will be index.
In the init part you will say the indexAction can be called in ajax mode, rendering html snippets ('html'):
$Ajaxcontext = $this->_helper->getHelper('AjaxContext');
$Ajaxcontext->addActionContext('index', 'html')
->initContext();
Now simply rename your view script feedparser/index.phtml to feedparser/index.ajax.phtml
In the indexAction, do your stuff and output what you want on your view script, do not think about layout composition problems, you're working alone with your own layout part and the composition is done on the js side.
In the javascript part, ensure you're calling via ajax ($.load or $.ajax with jQuery maybe) the url with format/html added as parameters (so http://example.com/feedparser/index/format/html)
Note that in my opinion you should use json responses and not html, maybe json with some html inside. But that's a matter on how you want to control your ajax communication (and handle errors, redirection and such, and it's another subject).
What about a view helper ?
You can read about it View Helpers in Zend Framework
I was thinking about implementing a logic similar to observer pattern on my website, for implementing hooks.
What I am looking for is something similar to this Best way to allow plugins for a PHP application
However the code there is too limited, as I cant attach multiple hooks to same listener.
I am clueless about how to amplify that code to make it able to listen multiple actions at one event.
Thank You
You can do as ircmaxell suggests: add hooks. But clearly, the information he gave was not enough for you.
If you like learning by example, you may look at the CMS Drupal, wich is not OOP, but uses the observer pattern, called hooks all over the place to allow a modular design.
A hook works as follows:
a piece of php looks for the existence of a specially named function.
If that exists, call it and use its output (or do nothing with it)
For example:
Just before an article gets saved in Drupal, the article-system calls the hook_insert
Every module that has a function in the name of ModuleName_insert, will see that function being called. Example: pirate.module may have a function pirate_insert(). The article system makes a roundtrip along all the modules and sees if ModuleName_insert exists. It will pass by pirate module and finds pirate_insert(). It will then call that function (and pass some arguments along too). As such, allowing the pirate.module to change the article just before insertation (or fire some actions, such as turning the body-text into pirate-speek).
The magic happens in so called user_callbacks. An example:
$hook = 'insert'
foreach (module_implements($hook) as $module) {
$function = $module .'_'. $hook;
$result = call_user_func_array($function, $args);
}
And the function module_implements might look something like:
$list = module_list(FALSE, TRUE, $sort); //looks for files that are considered "modules" or "addons".
foreach ($list as $module) {
if (function_exists($module.'_'.$hook)) { //see if the module has the hook 'registered'
$implementations[$hook][] = $module; //if so: add it to a list with functions to be called.
}
}
Simply add a ' * ' hook, and modify the hook() function to call all the 'hooks' in both the named event and the ' * ' event.
Then, simply do:
add_listener('*', 'mycallback');
Take a look at Spl_Observer.
You said you didn't want OOP, but you can easily implement a non-OOP wrapper around this.
I'm making an AJAX call in my symfony project, so it has an sf_format of 'js'. In the actionSuccess.js.php view, I call get_partial to update the content on the page. By default it looks for the partial in 'js' format since the sf_format is still set as 'js'. Is it possible to override the sf_format so that it uses the regular 'html' partial that I already have (so that I don't have to have two identical partials)?
I have had a similar issue.
I looked through the code, and get_partial doesn't give you any scope to change the format looked for ... guess you could modify the code to make that possible if you needed to.
I instead went for switching the request format - also not ideal in my opinion. But better than editing the symfony files.
To do this in the controller:
$request->setRequestFormat('html');
or in the view
$sf_context->getRequest()->setRequestFormat('html');
In both cases, if you want to set this back afterwards, you can retrieve the existing value using getRequestFormat().
if your looking for a more sustainable solution, you could listen to the view.configure_format and set the sfPHPView extension in your appflication configuration.
// in apps/api/config/apiConfiguration.class.php
public function configure() {
$this->dispatcher->connect('view.configure_format', array($this, 'configure_formats'));
}
public function configure_formats(sfEvent $event) {
// change extension, so our module templates and partials
// for xml do not need the .xml.php extension
$event->getSubject()->setExtension('.php');
}
The Smarty FAQ suggests one way to handle cacheable fragments, but it needs each page controller to do tons of work up-front, instead of encapsulating things properly.
We want to get to a stage where we can do something like:
<div id="header">
{our_categories}
{our_subcategories category=$current_category}
</div>
The output of the our_ prefixed functions should be completely cacheable, only relying on the named parameters (if any.) If we referred to {our_categories} in more than one template, they should all refer to the same cached content.
(it's probably worth mentioning that we tried using {insert name="..."} and coding up our own functions, but the results weren't cacheable, and we ended up hand-cranking the HTML retunred, rather than benefiting from Smarty's template processing.)
Our first crack at this uses a custom function smarty_function_our_categories, but the caching's going horribly wrong. Here's what our function looks like:
function smarty_function_our_categories($params, &$smarty) {
$smarty->caching = 2;
$smarty->cache_lifetime = 3600; # 1 hour
if (!$smarty->is_cached(...)) {
// ... do db access to fetch data for template...
$smarty->assign(....);
}
return $smarty->fetch(...);
}
The problem is: calling $smarty->fetch() within a function confuses smarty, making it lose track of which templates have insert-tags, and which don't. The end result is that Smarty forgets to replace certain markers when serving up cached content (markers it puts there to say: "replace this with the results of some non-caching {insert ...} call.) In our case, this manifests itself with our site showing a couple of md5 checksums and a php-serialized memento where our main menu should be - that's not good.
We assume we've made a mistake in how we're building our components, so the question finally becomes:
How do you safely create a caching component using Smarty to render itself?
You should not change caching parameters from inside Smarty function. Wheither or not the result of the plugin output is cacheable is defined when you register plugin.
http://www.smarty.net/manual/en/caching.cacheable.php
To create uncachable content inside cachable template just use {dynamic} blocks like this:
//Registering dynamic non-caching block with Smarty
$template->register_block('dynamic', 'smarty_block_dynamic', false);
function smarty_block_dynamic($param, $content, &$smarty) {
return $content;
}