Rails 3 - overwriting routes - ruby

I'm currently having some problems with setting up the right routes for my application.
In short I would like to have URLs like so:
explanation:
Show actual page for the selected poll
abstract:
localhost:3000/polls/:category_slug/:poll_id
example:
localhost:3000/polls/technology/1337
routes.rb
get 'polls/:category_slug/:poll_id' => 'polls#show', :as => :poll
Furthermore the user should be able to filter the polls against some criteria, like show Top-Polls, New-Polls and so on...
explanation:
Show a list of polls, which are matching the selected criteria
abstract:
localhost:3000/polls/:category_slug/:filter_mode
example:
localhost:3000/polls/technology/top
routes.rb
get 'polls/:category_slug/:filter_mode' => 'filter#by_mode', :as => :polls_filter
And here's the problem
ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound : Couldn't find Poll with ID=top_all
The second route ('polls/:category_slug/:filter_mode') is overwriting the first route so Rails recognizes the :filter_mode as a :poll_id.
So my question is, how can I change this behavior, so both routes will actually work without overwriting each other ? (the first route will work perefectly, when I leave out the second one)
I hope someone understands my problem, appreciate every help.

You can set a constraint on the filter one to take only strings, and then put it before the other one. It will fall through to the poll_id one.

Related

How to add / remove elements from array that is in Request

My request looks like this
Array
(
[name] => Eugene A
[address] => Array
(
[billing] => Array
(
[address] => aaa
)
[shipping] => Array
(
[address] => bbb
)
)
)
I need to delete the shipping address. But how?
I can only delete both addresses,
$request->request->remove('address');
but I don't want it.
I want to delete only shipping address, like so
$request->request->remove('address.shipping');
But it is not working for me
Laravel 5.6
Update
Why do I need it?
Easy. I have abstracted out my Form Request validation into a class that is a child to Illuminate\Foundation\Http\FormRequest.
I actually have few classes for validation. I call them one by one in a controller like so:
app()->make(CustomerPostRequest::class); // validate Customer information
app()->make(AddressSaveRequest::class); // validate Addresses
Why?
Now I can Mock this requests in unit-tests, and I can have my validation abstracted out. And I can use Address validation in many places.
But Now I need more flexibility. Why?
Because AddressSaveRequest rule looks like this
public function rules(): array
{
return [
'address.*.address' => [
'bail',
'required',
'string',
],
...
It validates all addresses.
But sometimes I don't want to validate shipping address, if the the chech_box - ship_to_the_same_address is ticked.
But I have my Address validator abstracted in separate file and it is used in many places. There are places where ship_to_the_same_address tick box is not presented.
Thus I cannot use 'required_unless:ship_to_same_address,yes',
And I cannot use
app()->makeWith(AddressSaveRequest::class, ['ship_to_the_same_address ' => 'yes']);
Because Taylor said ...when calling makeWith. In my opinion it should make a new instance each time this method is called because the given parameter array is dynamic.. And it does, and it does not work correctly with app()->instance(AddressSaveRequest::class, $addressSaveRequest); and cannot be mocked in unit tests.
Why Taylor decided it - I seriously don't know.
PS
And yes, I know that mocking requests is not recommended.
If you were trying to add or remove inputs from the Request itself:
You can add data to the request pretty easily by merging it in and letting Laravel handle which data source is being used:
$request->merge(['input' => 'value']);
That will merge in the input named input into the input source for the Request.
For removing inputs you could try to replace all the inputs without that particular input in the replacement:
$request->replace($request->except('address.shipping'));
Just one idea to try.
Try this:
$request->except(['address.shipping']);
Details: Laravel Request
Laravel has a helper method called array_forget, which does exactly what it sounds like:
$requestArray = $request->all();
$newArray = array_forget($requestArray, 'address.shipping')
Documentation
After the edit to the main question with why some inputs of the request are to be deleted, my main answer isn't correct anymore. User Lagbox has the correct answer for the question that was asked.
However, I would like to note that another solution would be to have seperate Request classes with validation. One for placing an order (assuming it is a system where someone can order stuff) where ship_to_same_address is present and another one for things like updating your account, like PlaceOrderRequest and UpdateAccountRequest classes.

MVC Putting an action in the most appropriate correct controller

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.

Polymorphic urls with singular resources

I'm getting strange output when using the following routing setup:
resources :warranty_types do
resources :decisions
end
resource :warranty_review, :only => [] do
resources :decisions
end
I have many warranty_types but only one warranty_review (thus the singular route declaration). The decisions are polymorphically associated with both. I have just a single decisions controller and a single _form.html.haml partial to render the form for a decision.
This is the view code:
= simple_form_for #decision, :url => [#decision_tree_owner, #decision.becomes(Decision)] do |form|
The warranty_type url looks like this (for a new decision):
/warranty_types/2/decisions
whereas the warranty_review url looks like this:
/admin/warranty_review/decisions.1
I think because the warranty_review id has no where to go, it's just getting appended to the end as an extension.
Can someone explain what's going on here and how I might be able to fix it?
I can work around it by trying to detect for a warranty_review class and substituting #decision_tree_owner with :warranty_review and this generates the correct url, but this is messy. I would have thought that the routing would be smart enough to realise that warranty_review is a singular resource and thus discard the id from the URL.
This is Rails 3 by the way :)
Apparently it's a long standing rails bug where polymorphic_url has no way of knowing whether a resource is singular or not from the routes setup:
https://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994/tickets/4077-wrong-redirect-after-creation-of-nested-singleton-resource-using-responder
I'm just going to resort to using a non-singular route even though there will only ever be one warranty_review. It's just aesthetics at the end of the day.

CakePHP, organize site structure around groups

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?

Best way to make sure username isn't a reserved word?

Let's say I'm building a web application whose user pages can be found at http://example.com/NAME. What's the best way to make sure the username doesn't conflict with a reserved word (e.g. 'about', 'contact', etc.)? I can think of two ways:
Maintain a list somewhere in my code. This is great and all, but means I have another piece of code I have to edit if I decide to, say, change the "about" page to "aboutus".
Request the URI (e.g. http://example.com/someusername) and check if it exists (doesn't return a 404). This feels kind of like a hack, but on the other hand it does exactly what it's supposed to do. On the other hand, I can't reserve anything without making a page for it.
What would be the best way to go about this? Manual validation of usernames is not an option. Thanks!
EDIT: I forgot to mention, the username has to go at the root, like this:
http://example.com/USERNAME
Not like this:
http://example.com/users/USERNAME
Hence why I'm asking this question. This is for technical reasons, don't ask.
I would strongly suggest using a unique path like http://example.com/users/NAME instead. Otherwise, what are you going to do if you want to add a reserved word, but a user has already taken it as their user name? You'll end up with all kinds of potential migration problems down the track.
Alternatively, if you must have something that goes straight off http://example.com/, could you possibly prefix all user names? So that user jerryjvl would translate to link http://example.com/user_jerryjvl?
If there is really no other possible solution, then I'd say either check user names against whatever data source determines what the 'reserved words' are, or make a lookup file / table / structure somewhere that contains all the reserved words.
In the interest of completeness, if you can't change the routing. Another possibility is to have your user routes and your non-user routes have a programmatic distinction. For example, if you appended a '_' to the end of each of your user routes, then you can make sure that users are located at: http://example.com/NAME_ and the other route would never end in '_'
How about changing your routing scheme so that users are at example.com/users/NAME ?
I maintain the reserved words inside the code.
This is the PERL code that I use in the http://postbit.com/ website to check if the usernamename is a reserved word:
# Black list of logins and sub-domains reserved keywords
my #black_list = qw(
about access account accounts add address adm admin administration
adult advertising affiliate affiliates ajax analytics android anon
anonymous api app apps archive atom auth authentication
...
);
my $username_normalized = lc($username);
$username_normalized =~ s/\W//gs; # 'log-in' -> 'login'
for my $this_username (#black_list) {
if ($username_normalized eq $this_username) {
die("This username is already taken. Please choose other username.\n");
}
}
The complete list of reserved names (like 'css', 'images', 'js', 'admin', 'root', 'old', 'test', 'www', 'admin', 'login', 'devel'...) with more than 300 login usernames is posted here:
http://blog.postbit.com/reserved-username-list.html
You only know what are these 'reserved' words. So better maintain a list and validate against it.
Another method will be if you use a CMS, then all these keywods 'about', 'contact' etc. will be there in your database. Validate against it.
Right next to the text box something like: "Please use your personal nickname or you real name. Usernames with common words indicating affiliation with the site administration may be revoked".
How about just create dummy accounts first with all the reserve words? just list all the possible ones and create them.
if you use
www.example.com/user/name
then there will be no problem but it seems like you'd like the URL to be short.
Maintain a list somewhere in my code. This is great and all, but means I have another piece of code I have to edit if I decide to, say, change the "about" page to "aboutus".
Your menus should be stored in an array/list. This way you would have only 1 piece of code to edit, not 2. =]
Then, since all menus are in one array, you can match username with elements in the array.
for example
$menu = array('About', 'Contact', 'Home')
if( in_array($username, $menu) ) {
echo 'invalid username'
}
You could always look and see how stackoverflow.com works.

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