sub-actions with CAction classes

Yii 1.1 General Discussion
1

Hi,

while writing an admin module I came to a wish to create sub-controllers, or sub-actions, or something like that.

I have a module "admin", with a section "rblocks".

It should have sub-section Links and Shop. I need view, add, and delete actions for both Links and Shop.

I want user to visit ?r=admin/rblocks and then browse to ?r=admin/rblocks/links.

I don’t want actions like ?r=admin/rblocks/linkAdd, I prefer ?r=admin/rblocks/links/add and dedicate all links-related actions into a single class.

But I don’t want a links module - it’s too much.

If I just make a folder admin/controllers/rblocks with controller LinksController, I can’t serve index calls, like site.com/admin/rblocks

If I make a controller controllers/RblocksController - I won’t access controllers/rblocks/LinksController, all will be caught by RblocksController class. I can set an Action class for ‘links’, but it can’t distinguish ‘links/add’ and ‘links/delete’.

I don’t want to pass action as a separate get parameter, it’s better be action in the route.

How would I do the structure for the request routing? maybe you’ll suggest an easy way?

I played with it a bit and came to a solution of the virtual paths served by action classes.

pastebin.com/MwnafYmY

My class LinksActions serves as a sub-controller, I can write actions like ?r=admin/rblocks/links/add and serve the index calls, like ?r=admin/rblocks and ?r=admin/rblocks/links.

The major limitation is that the combination of controller/action should not repeat in the URL.

Pity that CWebApplication::createController() does not store the call route to the controller, just the file path.

I can add it of course, like $this->controllerRoute = $route, but site will break on yii update.

Is there an easier solution?

2

what is your goal? for me it sounds you are just out for the beauty of your urls.

For that add a new rule to your urlmanager might be sufficient

3

The idea is to get the hierarchical structure similar to the one we have without the framework.

Not only controller/action, but controller/subcontroller/action as well.

To get several logically connected actions dedicated from the large controller into a subcontroller class, while keeping the controller functionality for other actions.

To be able take a part of a Stupid Fat Ugly Controller to a sub-structure.

The current architecture limited to module/controller/action is quite rigid.

4

perhaps go with:




class BaseController

{

    pubic function actionSub($act)

    {

        $this->forward(array('/sub/'.$act));

    }

}


class SubController extends BaseController

{

    public function actionDo()

    {

         ....

    }

}


Urlmanager rule:

'base/sub/<act>'=>array('base/sub'),

So you have an action inside your controller which will forward everything to the subcontroller (I think I missed the $_GET inside my example) The Urlmanager rule is just there to have it nice looking as you wished

An easier example: just to display your internal structure to the outside with a simple urlrule

so the above example without actionSub and Urlmanager rule:

‘base/sub/<action>’=>‘sub/<action>’

Another way would be to name the SubController better: BaseSubController would have the same information in the url just without the "/" (baseSub/myAction compared to your proposed base/sub/myAction)

But I don’t understand which userbase wants to have such detailed internal Information of your application… What I’ve seen is, that short and descriptive urls are more popular

5

Maybe you are right and I am compicating things, who cares after all.

The URL manager deserves a good descriptive article, its logic is not obvious.

Though, url mangling has a drawback of being called for each request, relative or not.

Thanks for hints.

6

I advice you to simply use submodule instead, you can go deep as you wish and there are no diffrerences in final results.