Routing
Routing is the process of mapping URL's to Controller and actions. In the introduction we defined a new custom route
for our TeamController
mapping any teams
URL to our TeamController
cms
module with and dealing with Page
objects then for your custom Page Type
controllers you
would extend ContentController
or PageController
. You don't need to define the routes value as the cms
handles
routing.
These routes by standard, go into a routes.yml
file in your applications _config
folder alongside your other
Configuration information.
app/_config/routes.yml
---
Name: approutes
After:
- '#rootroutes'
- '#coreroutes'
---
SilverStripe\Control\Director:
rules:
'teams//$Action/$ID/$Name': 'TeamController'
'player/': 'PlayerController'
'': 'HomeController'
routes.yml
file better, read the Configuration documentation.
Parameters
'teams//$Action/$ID/$Name': 'TeamController'
This route has defined that any URL beginning with team
should create, and be handled by a TeamController
instance.
It also contains 3 parameters
or params
for short. $Action
, $ID
and $Name
. These variables are placeholders
which will be filled when the user makes their request. Request parameters are available on the HTTPRequest
object
and able to be pulled out from a controller using $this->getRequest()->param($name)
.
$this->getRequest()
for the request object and $this->getResponse()
for the response.
Here is what those parameters would look like for certain requests
// GET /teams/
print_r($this->getRequest()->params());
// Array
// (
// [Action] => null
// [ID] => null
// [Name] => null
// )
// GET /teams/players/
print_r($this->getRequest()->params());
// Array
// (
// [Action] => 'players'
// [ID] => null
// [Name] => null
// )
// GET /teams/players/1
print_r($this->getRequest()->params());
// Array
// (
// [Action] => 'players'
// [ID] => 1
// [Name] => null
// )
You can also fetch one parameter at a time.
// GET /teams/players/1/
echo $this->getRequest()->param('ID');
// returns '1'
URL Patterns
The RequestHandler class will parse all rules you specify against the following patterns. The most specific rule will be the one followed for the response.
Pattern | Description |
---|---|
$ | Param Variable - Starts the name of a parameter variable, it is optional to match this unless ! is used |
! | Require Variable - Placing this after a parameter variable requires data to be present for the rule to match |
// | Shift Point - Declares that only variables denoted with a $ are parsed into the $params AFTER this point in the regex |
'teams/$Action/$ID/$OtherID': 'TeamController'
# /teams/
# /teams/players/
# /teams/
Standard URL handler syntax. For any URL that contains 'team' this rule will match and hand over execution to the
matching controller. The TeamsController
is passed an optional action, id and other id parameters to do any more
decision making.
'teams/$Action!/$ID!/': 'TeamController'
This does the same matching as the previous example, any URL starting with teams
will look at this rule but both
$Action
and $ID
are required. Any requests to team/
will result in a 404
error rather than being handed off to
the TeamController
.
'admin/help//$Action/$ID: 'AdminHelp'
Match an url starting with /admin/help/
, but don't include /help/
as part of the action (the shift point is set to
start parsing variables and the appropriate controller action AFTER the //
).
Wildcard URL Patterns
As of Silverstripe CMS 4.6 there are two wildcard patterns that can be used. $@
and $*
. These parameters can only be used
at the end of a URL pattern, any further rules are ignored.
Inspired by bash variadic variable syntax there are two ways to capture all URL parameters without having to explicitly specify them in the URL rule.
Using $@
will split the URL into numbered parameters ($1
, $2
, ..., $n
). For example:
<?php
class StaffController extends \SilverStripe\Control\Controller
{
private static $url_handlers = [
'staff/$@' => 'index',
];
public function index($request)
{
// GET /staff/managers/bob
$request->latestParam('$1'); // managers
$request->latestParam('$2'); // bob
}
}
Alternatively, if access to the parameters is not required in this way then it is possible to use $*
to match all
URL parameters but not collect them in the same way:
<?php
class StaffController extends \SilverStripe\Control\Controller
{
private static $url_handlers = [
'staff/$*' => 'index',
];
public function index($request)
{
// GET /staff/managers/bob
$request->remaining(); // managers/bob
}
}
URL Handlers
$Action//$ID/$OtherID
. If you fail to do so, and your pattern has more than
2 parameters, your controller will throw the error "I can't handle sub-URLs of
a class name object" with HTTP status 404.
In the above example the URLs were configured using the Director rules in the routes.yml file. Alternatively
you can specify these in your Controller class via the $url_handlers static array. This array is processed by the
RequestHandler at runtime once the Controller
has been matched.
This is useful when you want to provide custom actions for the mapping of teams/*
. Say for instance we want to respond
coaches
, and staff
to the one controller action payroll
.
app/src/controllers/TeamController.php
use SilverStripe\Control\Controller;
class TeamController extends Controller
{
private static $allowed_actions = [
'payroll'
];
private static $url_handlers = [
'staff/$ID/$Name' => 'payroll',
'coach/$ID/$Name' => 'payroll'
];
The syntax for the $url_handlers
array users the same pattern matches as the YAML
configuration rules.
Now let’s consider a more complex example from a real project, where using
$url_handlers is mandatory. In this example, the URLs are of the form
http://example.org/feed/go/
, followed by 5 parameters. The PHP controller
class specifies the URL pattern in $url_handlers
. Notice that it defines 5
parameters.
use SilverStripe\CMS\Controllers\ContentController;
class FeedController extends ContentController
{
private static $allowed_actions = ['go'];
private static $url_handlers = [
'go/$UserName/$AuthToken/$Timestamp/$OutputType/$DeleteMode' => 'go'
];
public function go()
{
$this->validateUser(
$this->getRequest()->param('UserName'),
$this->getRequest()->param('AuthToken')
);
/* more processing goes here */
}
}
The YAML rule, in contrast, is simple. It needs to provide only enough information for the framework to choose the desired controller.
SilverStripe\Control\Director:
rules:
'feed': 'FeedController'
Root URL Handlers
In some cases, the Director rule covers the entire URL you intend to match, and you simply want the controller to respond to a 'root' request. This request will automatically direct to an index()
method if it exists on the controller, but you can also set a custom method to use in $url_handlers
with the '/'
key:
use SilverStripe\Control\Controller;
class BreadAPIController extends Controller
{
private static $allowed_actions = [
'getBreads',
'createBread',
];
private static $url_handlers = [
'GET /' => 'getBreads',
'POST /' => 'createBread',
];
Related Lessons
Links
- Controller API documentation
- Director API documentation
- Example routes: framework
- Example routes: cms