I have a project with two areas. The two areas allow for different member types who don't share any controllers or views (eg student and teacher). However they both share the root controllers for Contact and Support pages etc.
Currently I use the namespace to route within each area.
I want to do something like this but give priority to the namespaces so they don't have conflicting controllers:
context.MapRoute(
"Student_Default",
"{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { area = "Student", controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
new { RoleConstraint = new AuthenticationConstraint() },
new[] { "Test.Web.Areas.Student.Controllers", "Test.Web.Controllers" }
);
Alternatively I tried using "UseNamespaceFallback" but causes a search in all areas which I don't want.
Something else I have not tried is only registering the area when the user logs on. Would this be an acceptable approach?
Also I could just map each page but there will potentially be a lot and it would be messy to do each one.
So the question is how can I make the root controllers available to both areas without the areas being available to each other? Let me know if more information is needed, I'd be happy to give more about what I'm trying to do.
After thinking about this though the weekend I decided to use "UseNamespaceFallback". I also implemented user roles to manage which areas each user has access to. I think this is a better approach as I had read a recommendation to never use namespace as a method for authentication.
Related
So I am brand new to .net. I am learning .net core right now. I am trying to figure out routing. I can not seem to get the routing to look in any folder except Home and Shared. I have looked all over the internet and tried many things. There seems to be something I am missing. Here is what I got
app.UseMvc(routes =>
{
routes.MapRoute(
name: "test",
template: "Register/test",
defaults: new { controller = "Register", action = "test"}
);
routes.MapRoute(
name: "default",
template: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}");
});
I have a Register folder with a test.cshtml file in just to try t figure this routing out. And this is is in my HomeController.cs file
public IActionResult test()
{
return View();
}
on my _Layout page I have this link
<li><a asp-area="" asp-controller="Register" asp-action="test">Test</a></li>
It works fine when I put it in the home folder, but I want to keep things separate. I know there is something I am missing. I've poured through all kinds on articles online including Stack Overflow, and I just don't understand what I am missing. From what I read its suppose to be like the Parent folder/File/ then and id that may be attached to that like a user name I have tried other formats for the routing with no luck, this was just my most recent attempt. I just can't help but think I need some bit of code somewhere else.
From your question it looks like you have the following code in your HomeController.
public IActionResult test()
{
return View();
}
That actually belongs in your RegisterController because the route template you defined is an explicit capture with defaults to the "Register" controller and the "test" action.
The view called "test.cshtml" - which should be named as such because of the default convention - should reside in your \Views\Register folder, next door to \Views\Home.
There are a couple of reasons why this may have worked in some fashion. First, the view is discoverable for any controller if it's in shared. Without knowing more about the requests you tried, it's difficult to determine if routing kicked in on the first route or second, but if that method was truly on HomeController requests to /home/test would have worked.
It looks to me like you're exploring routing. That is great - I 100% encourage the experimentation - so long as you know that routing isn't necessarily the lowest hanging fruit to learn. It's also something that you shouldn't have to touch 93.7% of the time. For example, the route you have defined about wouldn't be required for the controller and action you're adding with RegisterController and test.
Cheers.
It may sound like a pedantic question. Sorry :)
I have a case like this... here's my router definition:
Router.map(function() {
this.resource('gobernadores', { path: '/gobernadores' }, function() {
this.resource('gobernador', { path: '/:id_estado' }, function() {
this.route('simulacion', { path: '/simulacion' }),
this.route('info', { path: '/info' })
})
});
this.route("login");
this.route("bienvenido");
});
In the "gobernadores" route, I have list of provinces. You can see it's a nested layout. In that same page, we're showing the currently-selected province (that's the gobernador route). Inside the template for that gobernador route, I have a tab, with two elements..., one showing the route "simulacion", and the other one showing the template of route "info" (of that province).
Now, the problem: as user jumps from one province to another province (by clicking the navigation menu on the left side of the screen), I want to keep in memory, the tab that was currently selected, for each province.
So, if the user is currently seeing the result of simulacion of province X, and then he clicks on the link to go to province Y (where he will be presented with "info" of province Y), and then he goes back to province X, I want the app to take the user back to the screen he was seeing (the simulacion of province X).
You can't have that information stored in the controller (GobernadorController), because I can see that controllers can't keep state, it's stateless.
So..., I have to move that info into the model of the route (GobernadorRouteModel)...
My doubt: is it okay? Why my doubt? Because of this: http://emberjs.com/guides/concepts/core-concepts/
It says:
MODELS
A model is an object that stores persistent state. Templates are
responsible for displaying the model to the user by turning it into
HTML. In many applications, models are loaded via an HTTP JSON API,
although Ember is agnostic to the backend that you choose.
ROUTE
A route is an object that tells the template which model it should
display.
This GobernadorRouteModel is not something I persists in the backend. I have no intention to do that. So, am I violating the general advice for a good EmberJS app?
Or in other words: "persistent" here doesn't have to mean "something you save into DB", right? It's just "something you want to keep around..., eventhough only during the session of the app, in the memory".
Thanks in advance,
Raka
You can't have that information stored in the controller (GobernadorController), because I can see that controllers can't keep state, it's stateless.
This might be where your problem arises. Controllers are not stateless. Controllers in Ember are singletons and keep their state throughout the lifecycle of the app. However, this is going to change in Ember 2.0. To quote from that RFC:
Persistent state should be stored in route objects and passed as initial properties to routable components.
So if you're trying to be forward-compatible, that is the approach I would take. In my opinion, models should really only be used for persistent state (persistent meaning it's persisted between page loads). To keep session state, I would do as the RFC says and keep that state in the routes and inject it into the controllers during the resetController hook.
Or if you don't want to be that fancy and you don't care about forward-compatibility, just have a global Session object that you store state in. That's how I currently do it and it works quite well. (Although we will probably move away from it.)
TL;DR: No, I don't think you're using models for their intended purpose.
So I’m looking to make some routes within my super cool can.js application. Aiming for something like this…
#!claims ClaimsController - lists claims
#!claims/:id ClaimController - views a single claim
#!claims/new ClaimController - creates a new claim
#!claims/:id/pdf - do nothing, the ClaimController will handle it
#!admin AdminController - loads my Administrative panel with menu
#!admin/users - do nothing, the AdminController will handle it
#!admin/settings - do nothing, the AdminController will handle it
So how might we do this?
“claims route”: function() { load('ClaimsController'); },
“claims/:id route”: function() { load('ClaimController'); },
“admin”: function() { load(‘AdminController’); },
Cool beans, we’re off. So what if someone sends a link to someone like...
http://myapp#!claims/1/pdf
Nothing happens! Ok, well let’s add the route.
“claims/:id/pdf route”: function() { load('ClaimController'); },
Great. Now that link works. Here, the router’s job is only to load the controller. The controller will recognize that the pdf action is wanted, and show the correct view.
So pretend I’ve loaded up a claim claims/:id and I edit one or two things. Then I click the Print Preview button to view the PDF and change my route to claims/:id/pdf.
What should happen… the Claim Controller is watching the route and shows the pdf view.
What actually happens… the router sees the change, matches the claims/:id/pdf route we added, and reloads the Claim Controller, displaying a fresh version of the claim pulled from the server/cache, losing my changes.
To try and define the problem, I need the router to identify when the route changes, what controller the route belongs to, and if the controller is already loaded, ignore it. But this is hard!
claims //
claims/:id // different controllers!
claims/:id //
claims/:id/pdf // same controller!
We could just bind on the "controller" change. So defining routes like can.route(':controller') and binding on :controller.
{can.route} controller
// or
can.route.bind('controller', function() {...})
But clicking on a claim (changing from ClaimsController to ClaimController) won't trigger, as the first token claim is the same in both cases.
Is there a convention I can lean on? Should I be specifying every single route in the app and checking if the controller is loaded? Are my preferred route urls just not working?
The following is how I setup routing in complex CanJS applications. You can see an example of this here.
First, do not use can.Control routes. It's an anti-pattern and will be removed in 3.0 for something like the ideas in this issue.
Instead you setup a routing app module that imports and sets up modules by convention similar to this which is used here.
I will explain how to setup a routing app module in a moment. But first, it's important to understand how can.route is different from how you are probably used to thinking of routing. Its difference makes it difficult to understand at first, but once you get it; you'll hopefully see how powerful and perfect it is for client-side routing.
Instead of thinking of urls, think of can.route's data. What is in can.route.attr(). For example, your URLs seem to have data like:
page - the primary area someone is dealing with
subpage - an optional secondary area within the page
id - the id of a type
For example, admin/users might want can.route.attr() to return:
{page: "admin", subpage: "users"}
And, claims/5 might translate into:
{page: "claims", id: "5"}
When I start building an application, I only use urls that look like #!page=admin&subpage=users and ignore the pretty routing until later. I build an application around state first and foremost.
Once I have the mental picture of the can.route.attr() data that encapsulates my application's state, I build a routing app module that listens to changes in can.route and sets up the right controls or components. Yours might look like:
can.route.bind("change", throttle(function(){
if( can.route.attr("page") == "admin" ) {
load("AdminController")
} else if(can.route.attr("page") === "claims" && can.route.attr("id") {
load("ClaimController")
} else if ( ... ) {
...
} else {
// by convention, load a controller for whatever page is
load(can.capitalize(can.route.attr("page")+"Controller")
}
}) );
Finally, after setting all of that up, I make my pretty routes map to my expected can.route.attr() values:
can.route(":page"); // for #!claims, #!admin
can.route("claims/new", {page: "claims", subpage: "new"});
can.route("claims/:id", {page: "claims"});
can.route("admin/:subpage",{page: "admin"});
By doing it this way, you keep your routes independent of rest of the application. Everything simply listens to changes in can.route's attributes. All your routing rules are maintained in one place.
I was just wondering what the best practice approach is for deciding where to create an action/view in certain situations.
If User hasMany Video
where is the best place to create the action/view to show user videos?
So within the Users account page 'My Videos' link do you
just create a users/my_videos action and view.
create videos/my_videos action and view.
or as is most likely you would already have a Controller/Action of videos/index which would have search functionality. Simply use this passing in a user id.
Any thoughts/advice greatly appreciated
Thanks
Leo
One potential option is to do the following:
Since the videos likely have much more code around them than a simple which user has which videos lookup the video list action should be in the VideosController.
In past projects I have (in CakePHP 1.3) used prefix routing to address some of this.
In config/core.php make sure you enable routing.prefixes to include a 'user' prefix.
<?php
... in routes.php ...
Routing.prefixes = array( 'user' );
?>
In the videos controller make an action with the following signature:
<?php
...
public function user_index( $userID = null ){
...
}
?>
and in the views where you link to the list of users videos the html::link call should look similar to the following:
<?php
...
echo $this->Html->link( 'User\'s Videos', array(
'controller' => 'videos',
'action' => 'index',
'prefix' => 'user',
$this->Session->read( 'Auth.User.id' )
));
?>
Of course this assumes you are using the Auth component here to track the logged in user. The Session helper code to read the authenticated user id might need tweaking.
This lets you a) Not worry too much about routing aside from enabling prefix routing and b) will quickly let you have pretty links like so -- site.com/user/videos/index/419
Couple this with some Slug love ( this is the best link for this I have seen - no slug field required on the db layer - http://42pixels.com/blog/slugs-ugly-bugs-pretty-urls )
You could even end up with urls like so quite easily: site.com/user/videos/index/eben-roux
and with just a tiny bit of editing to app/config/routes.php you could eliminate the /index/ portion and the results would be SEO friendly and user friendly in the format:
site.com/user/videos/eben-roux
http://book.cakephp.org/view/945/Routes-Configuration
As always with code you have the two extremes of:
1) Putting everything in a single controller
2) Having every action in a separate controller
The ideal approach will nearly always be somewhere between the two so how to decide what is grouped together and what is separated?
In MVC I tend to look at the Views and see what the commonalities are: as you point out Users have a ref to a collection of Videos in the Model, but would you want both sets of Data in any single View? i.e. In this example is it likely that you would be on a page that both managed user details, and displayed the list of vids? If not then I'd suggest separate controllers.
If either controller would then be extremely simple - e.g. one method, then may be worth considering merging the two.
I like to keeps things separate.
What I'd do is an index action in videos controller, passing user's id as argument and then displaying only current users video.
public function index($id = null){
$this->paginate = array( 'conditions'=> array('Video.user_id' => $id));
$this->set('videos', $this->paginate());
}
My take is that it depends on the responsibility you assign to the controllers.
I would say that something like a User or a Video controller should be concerned with only those entities.
You may want to consider something like a UserDashboard (or something similar but appropriately named) as alluded to by Dunhamzzz in the comments. This can aggegate all the functionality from an "entry" point-of-view. The same way a banner / shortcut / action menu would work.
Your UserDashboard would use whatever data layer / repository is required to get the relevant data (such as the IVideoRepository or IVideoQuery implementation).
Usually when something doesn't feel right it isn't. Try splitting it out and see how it works. You can alsways re-arrange / refactor again later.
Just a thought.
I don't think there's a 'one-rule-fits-all' solution to this question, but I would try to take an approach in which you would determine what the main object is that you're dealing with, and adding the action/view to that object's controller.
In your example I'd say that your main object is a video and that the action you're requiring is a list of video's filtered by a specific property (in this case the user's id, but this could very well be a category, a location, etc.).
One thing I would not do is let your desired URL determine in which controller you put your functionality. URLs are trivially changed with routes.
So, I'm not quite sure how I should structure this in CakePHP to work correctly in the proper MVC form.
Let's, for argument sake, say I have the following data structure which are related in various ways:
Team
Task
Equipment
This is generally how sites are and is quite easy to structure and make in Cake. For example, I would have the a model, controller and view for each item set.
My problem (and I'm sure countless others have had it and already solved it) is that I have a level above the item sets. So, for example:
Department
Team
Task
Equipment
Department
Team
Task
Equipment
Department
Team
Task
Equipment
In my site, I need the ability for someone to view the site at an individual group level as well as move to view it all together (ie, ignore the groups).
So, I have models, views and controls for Depart, Team, Task and Equipment.
How do I structure my site so that from the Department view, someone can select a Department then move around the site to the different views for Team/Task/Equipment showing only those that belong to that particular Department.
In this same format, is there a way to also move around ignoring the department associations?
Hopefully the following example URLs clarifies anything that was unclear:
// View items while disregarding which group-set record they belong to
http://www.example.com/Team/action/id
http://www.example.com/Task/action/id
http://www.example.com/Equipment/action/id
http://www.example.com/Departments
// View items as if only those associated with the selected group-set record exist
http://www.example.com/Department/HR/Team/action/id
http://www.example.com/Department/HR/Task/action/id
http://www.example.com/Department/HR/Equipment/action/id
Can I get the controllers to function in this manner? Is there someone to read so I can figure this out?
Thanks to those that read all this :)
I think I know what you're trying to do. Correct me if I'm wrong:
I built a project manager for myself in which I wanted the URLs to be more logical, so instead of using something like
http://domain.com/project/milestones/add/MyProjectName I could use
http://domain.com/project/MyProjectName/milestones/add
I added a custom route to the end (!important) of my routes so that it catches anything that's not already a route and treats it as a "variable route".
Router::connect('/project/:project/:controller/:action/*', array(), array('project' => '[a-zA-Z0-9\-]+'));
Whatever route you put means that you can't already (or ever) have a controller by that name, for that reason I consider it a good practice to use a singular word instead of a plural. (I have a Projects Controller, so I use "project" to avoid conflicting with it.)
Now, to access the :project parameter anywhere in my app, I use this function in my AppController:
function __currentProject(){
// Finding the current Project's Info
if(isset($this->params['project'])){
App::import('Model', 'Project');
$projectNames = new Project;
$projectNames->contain();
$projectInfo = $projectNames->find('first', array('conditions' => array('Project.slug' => $this->params['project'])));
$project_id = $projectInfo['Project']['id'];
$this->set('project_name_for_layout', $projectInfo['Project']['name']);
return $project_id;
}
}
And I utilize it in my other controllers:
function overview(){
$this->layout = 'project';
// Getting currentProject id from App Controller
$project_id = parent::__currentProject();
// Finding out what time it is and performing queries based on time.
$nowStamp = time();
$nowDate = date('Y-m-d H:i:s' , $nowStamp);
$twoWeeksFromNow = $nowDate + 1209600;
$lateMilestones = $this->Project->Milestone->find('all', array('conditions'=>array('Milestone.project_id' => $project_id, 'Milestone.complete'=> 0, 'Milestone.duedate <'=> $nowDate)));
$this->set(compact('lateMilestones'));
$currentProject = $this->Project->find('all', array('conditions'=>array('Project.slug' => $this->params['project'])));
$this->set(compact('currentProject'));
}
For your project you can try using a route like this at the end of your routes.php file:
Router::connect('/:groupname/:controller/:action/*', array(), array('groupname' => '[a-zA-Z0-9\-]+'));
// Notice I removed "/project" from the beginning. If you put the :groupname first, as I've done in the last example, then you only have one option for these custom url routes.
Then modify the other code to your needs.
If this is a public site, you may want to consider using named variables. This will allow you to define the group on the URL still, but without additional functionality requirements.
http://example.com/team/group:hr
http://example.com/team/action/group:hr/other:var
It may require custom routes too... but it should do the job.
http://book.cakephp.org/view/541/Named-parameters
http://book.cakephp.org/view/542/Defining-Routes
SESSIONS
Since web is stateless, you will need to use sessions (or cookies). The question you will need to ask yourself is how to reflect the selection (or not) of a specific department. It could be as simple as putting a drop down selection in the upper right that reflects ALL, HR, Sales, etc. When the drop down changes, it will set (or clear) the Group session variable.
As for the functionality in the controllers, you just check for the Session. If it is there, you limit the data by the select group. So you would use the same URLs, but the controller or model would manage how the data gets displayed.
// for all functionality use:
http://www.example.com/Team/action/id
http://www.example.com/Task/action/id
http://www.example.com/Equipment/action/id
You don't change the URL to accommodate for the functionality. That would be like using a different URL for every USER wanting to see their ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER, or BILLING INFO. Where USER would be the group and ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER< and BILLING INFO would be the item sets.
WITHOUT SESSIONS
The other option would be to put the Group filter on each page. So for example on Team/index view you would have a group drop down to filter the data. It would accomplish the same thing without having to set and clear session variables.
The conclusion is and the key thing to remember is that the functionality does not change nor does the URLs. The only thing that changes is that you will be working with filtered data sets.
Does that make sense?