I have a regular view I'd like to use in another page, appearing magically in a jQuery-like accordion if the expand button is clicked. If I call it using:
Html.Partial(A_non_partial_view, new view_model_used_by_the_non_partial_view())
...does that have a chance of working, or is MVC not plumbed that way? (I'm using MVC 3 if that helps.)
You can, but only if it is in the same controllers views folder or in the shared views folder. otherwise you will have to specify that path fully which isn't practically really.
If you use Html.Action or Html.RenderAction, then that action will need to return a PartialView otherwise it will push out a full html page again with head tags etc etc
Related
I'm a developer and I am very confident with MVC pattern and have already developed a lot of webapp from scratch using php framework like symfony or yii.
I'm a little bit confused about joomla mvc and terminology and after googling a lot, read joomla book extensions guide, read on joomla website my doubt are still there.
What is confusing for me is the component mvc structure and how I have to set up "my way of think" about joomla mvc, for doing the things in the joomla way.
In particular I am used to reasoning in terms of controller/action (like in symfony and yii framework)
So the final list of all my webapp url will be
controller1/action1
controller1/action2
controller1/action3
controller2/action1
controller2/action2
Each controller's action will decide what view to render and what layout to use for showing the view.
In particular in these frameworks, the definition of a layout is exactly the mean of a layout. And the view is the "core part" of the page.
So I can have a view with a list of users and I can put this view inside a mobile layout or a desktop layout, or to build a view for mobile and put it only in the mobile layout and so on.
The final result about directory structure in my webapp is something similar to the following:
controllers/
controller1
controller2
controller3
models/
modelForTableA
modelForTableB
views/
controller1/
viewForAction1
viewForAction2
layouts/
mobileLayout.php
desktopLayout.php
and for me is very clear to understand.
So finally my questions are:
how would be the directory structure in joomla?
what are in joomla the definition of view, layout and task?
I need to clarify that I do not need an explaination about MVC works in general, but if I would achieve the same result as before, how I have to organize my code and my work?
Suppose that I want to build a component with the following "url"
userController/addUser
userController/editUser
userController/listUsers
userController/viewUserDetail
anotherController/addOperation
anotherController/editOperation
anotherController/myNonCrudOperation
Thank you very much
Routing in Joomla is slightly different. The SEF URLs are built from menu items, which in turn point to a View/Layout combination.
This turns things around: a controller is not bound to a specific View/Layout.
Let's make an example of the flow with the addUser functionality you mentioned as an example; I'll be referring to these files (but you'll have plenty more):
/controllers/user.php
/models/user.php
/views/useradd/view.html.php
/views/useradd/tmpl/default.php
/views/useradd/tmpl/default.xml
/controller.php
/router.php
As you can see the layouts are inside each view's tmpl folder.
router.php
Let's start from this last file: router.php defines our custom SEF rules so, after Joomla passes the call to our component (usually with the params
?option=com_componentname) we can takeover and interpret the URL as we wish. It is a bit hard to get started with but does provide the most flexibility and power. We don't really need to implement it at all for this simple example: so back to our registration now.
First step: show the "new user" form.
You would typically bind this to a menu item, pointing to the /views/useradd/tmpl/default.php; the /views/useradd/tmpl/default.xml contains the definition of the layout so it's available in the menu manager. Very often there is only one layout per view.
Control is passed to the view /views/useradd/view.html.php , and the view will then load an instance of its own model (automatically chosen based on the view name, you can load other models of course) to gather any initialization data.
The view then renders the layout, and presents it to the user.
The layout's responsibility includes generating a form with an appropriate action (endpoint) and security tokens if appropriate:
<form action="index.php?option=com_mycomponent">
<input type="hidden" task="user.save">
<?php echo JHtml::_('form.token');?>
as you see it doesn't really matter if you want to use <input or params on the url, and you can most often mix them.
Form interaction
For autocompletion the form may need to invoke some backend controller methods, i.e. the method emailAvailable() in the /controllers/user.php
It does not make sense to have such functionality indexed, so we'll invoke the method directly with a non-SEF url:
index.php?option=com_ourcomponent&task=user.emailAvailable
followed by any other parameter. This will work in both get and post.
The controller /controllers/user.php's emailAvailable() method will return a json structure and then invoke exit() as we don't want the CMS to kick in at all. An alternative solution is to add the param &format=json in the call.
{"email":"johndoe#example.com", "available":true}
Saving the data
When the user submits the form, processing is first handled by the controller since a task is specified. (see above task=user.save). Joomla will invoke the method save() in the controller /controllers/user.php.
This time, however, our controller is responsible for returning information to the user. After processing the data, it may choose to re-render the registration form showing an error, or a thank you page. In either case the controller simply sets the redirect, letting Joomla handle the rendering when appropriate.
$this->setRedirect(JRoute::_('index.php?option=com_yourcomponent&view=useradd', false));
More control
Each time a controller task is not specified, the display() method of the main controller is invoked. You can add custom logic there.
Joomla fires several events during a view rendering; these can be intercepted by a system plugin or - if you add in the calls - other kinds of plugins as well. You may even create your own types of plugins. Do not try to instantiate a view manually from a controller, as this may inhibit plugin firing.
Small insight,
1) Directory Structure
controllers/
controller1
controller2
controller3
models/
modelForTableA
modelForTableB
views/
layout1
2) View and layout and task
check this answer
3) More routing techniques with SEF.
Hope it helps.
solved with this. I cannot delete this question because there already exists other answer.
Could any moderator close or delete this? Thank you
https://joomla.stackexchange.com/questions/18774/joomla-terminology-view-layout-task-and-component-development/18799#18799
I have Yii2 application which has a regular controller with regular action and its view trying to render a view that's part of an extension. My view is in the 'views/controllerName' folder and I'm trying to reach a view which is in 'vendor/providerName/extensionName/views/extensionController'. What is the right way to do that?
I'm tried the regular render() method with different strings like: extensionController/extensionView, /extensionController/extensionView, //extensionController/extensionView but I keep getting an error message that the file is not found in the main view folder which is not where I want the framework to look at first place.
e.g.
echo $this->render('#vendor/firephp/test');
so in your case
echo $this->render('#vendor/providerName/extensionName/views/extensionController');
Let's say I have a simple ASP MVC3 list controller, with an add method, with an id parameter.
List:
http://localhost/MVCAPP/ListFoo/
Add method
http://localhost/MVCAPP/ListFoo/Add?id=1
In my Add method, I update my Viewmodel with the added element, then makes a call to:
return View("ListFoo", viewModel);
The updated list is displayed, and everything's almost fine.
The problem is that with such a return, the URL in the address bar is still
http://localhost/MVCAPP/ListFoo/Add?id=1
And if the user hits F5, another item will be added, which I'd like to prevent.
I know I can filter out such a behavior in the controller, but I'd rather prefer to redirect the browser address bar to:
http://localhost/MVCAPP/ListFoo/
Do you know any way to do this?
By the way, I'm not sure trying to control the address bar content is the right way to look at this issue...
Use the Action.RedirectToAction method to redirect the client after the work is done in the controller.
Besides that, you could use POST as FormMethod to send data to the server.
That is why you need to use PRG: Post-Redirect-Get when you are doing any such form post.
Have a look here.
So the best option is to redirect the user to a GET method to display the page.
I have a partial view that I have included on my _Layout.cshtml. It simply has a javascript function that changes an image based on the state of my system. I don't need to reload any data, I don't need to go to the code of the controller for anything, I simply need to reload that partial view.
I tried many of the examples that I found here but couldn't get any of them to work. I felt as if they were too complex for what I was doing anyway. Any guidance would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve
If the partial is loaded into the layout directly then there's no straightforward way to refresh it, because it's basically a part of the complete rendered page.
Your best bet is to render the partial using $.load or whatever equivalent you have available by hitting a controller method and rendering the result into a container (like a div). You would have to do this within a script that is loaded with the layout itself, by observing document.ready or something like that. Once you have that in place then it's trivial to keep reloading or refreshing the contents by hitting the controller method as many times as you need. For example in jQuery:
$(document).ready(function () {
RefreshPartial();
window.setInterval(RefreshPartial, 10000);
});
function RefreshPartial() {
$('#container').load('/some/controller/endpoint', {parameters});
}
This will call the controller method, and set the inner contents of the element identified with #container. You can call RefreshPartial as many times as you want.
Partial views only exist on the server. The only way to "refresh" the partial is to go back to the server to get it again.
Obviously, you must be doing something in the partial that needs refreshing. Whatever that is, should be callable from javascript to do the refresh.
Imagine I have a form (Page1.cshtml) with 1 link (LinkBrands). I also have a controller for Page1 (Page1Controller) and one for brands (BrandController). When the user clicks the link what is better to do:
LinkBrands-->Page1Controller-->BrandController (Page1Controller's action will redirect to BrandController)
OR
LinkBrands-->BrandController
Not sure what route is better. Any suggestions?
Usually you don't have a single controller per view. You would use multiple views or partial views all calling actions on the same related controller. I assume Brand is a separate entity from whatever else Page1 is trying to display, therefore it should probably use the BrandController directly but since there really isn't enough information to go on with your example as to what page1's function is I couldn't say what you are trying to relate.
If you need to capture information from the brand link as it relates to page1 then sure have it collect that in page1controller first before redirecting to brandcontroller to display a new view.
What does your Page1Controller do?? It seems as though you are defeating the purpose of the Model-View-Controller architecture and trying to form it back to the WebForms method with code-behind.
So without seeing what exactly your controllers are doing, I'd say your second option is best.
It all depends.
If you have to execute any logic in Page1Controller (saving data for instance) before displaying the second page, then you need to go by Page1Controller, and then go to BrandController:
LinkBrands-->Page1Controller-->BrandController
In case you just need to redirected to the second page (you do not need anything from Page1Controller, you do not need it to perform any action, and you can create a the model for second page in BrandController) then go with the second option:
LinkBrands-->BrandController
Hope this helps.