Could somebody explain is it possible to have potected, pivate methods in playfamewok's contolles except:
public static void method-action-name() {}
For example if I would have method like this:
protected static int doSomeWork() {}
and this method would be invoked in method-action-name() ..
public static void method-action-name() {
...
int resul = doSomeWork();
...
}
I do not want to have long action-method, so I would like to split it to smaller ones, and then reuse it in other action-methods.
I mean is it ok (from playframework's point of view) to have such method in controller side instead of having them in domain classes? In Spring Framework, we use BP (business process) beans for that, for example.
Is it ok to have such helper methods for business methods in playframework controllers ?
Added after having answer & comments:
For example if I have SearchController class then for that class would be nice to have methods like preSearch1(), preSearch2() what search() method would use, but if I move these methods (1,2) to another class then it should be class with name like SearchHelper then? in package named /src/helpers.. not very nice because they related to search too. But maybe then into /src/bp/SearchBP (bp=business-process). And then in controllers/Search i use /bp/SearchBP that use some Model object with .save() DAO methods (SearchBP can use Domain methods and Search class can use Domain methods as well)
The question here: what class ant package would be nice for those methods? (i just did watch it in examples - there alway very simple usage of controllers that use domain object that why i ask)
yes, you can. Controllers are normal classes, you can add whatever you want. It may not be recommended to clutter them with helper methods, I personally would move them to another class, but you can do what you say.
ANSWER TO EDIT:
The name of the package is "irrelevant", won't change it too much :). You can put them under controllers.support.search which would mean controllers.support is a package with helper classes and the subpackage search contains helper classes and methods related to search.
One alternative (which I like more) is to create a Service layer for that, in a "services" package. You seem to come from a Spring background, so it should come naturally to you. These services are instantiated in the controller as required, or maybe just used via static methods, and do the main business logic. That way the controller only tackles the "higher level" logic.
Another alternative is to move as much of that logic as possible into the Model (avoidid the Anemic Domain Model), and using the Model classes from the controller.
As most decisions in development, which one is better depends on your experience, possible impact/limitations in the codebase, practices in your project... anyway, you can always refactor. Just choose the one that you are more used to (it seems to be Services approach) and code away :)
Any behaviour that's complicated enough to be described as "business logic" (rather than "presentation logic") belongs in the model, not the controller. If your model does nothing but map to/from a set of database tables, then it isn't doing its job properly. Things like permissions and access control, in particular, should be enforced by the model.
Related
I am a beginner starting out in laravel 5.2 and I think these concepts below should be explained more straight forward than just reading documentation.
Service Providers
Service Container
Contracts
Facades
I think a good explanation and examples that can really help beginners understand how these 4 concepts fit together in the framework.
Service provider :
The so called service providers are the heartbeat of your Laravel application. They are the central element of the initialization process where all the relevant and required code is loaded by PHP. This includes all the essentials from the framework itself, but also any own and custom code you need to load.
Inversion of Control, or IoC :
Can't be explained easly (i only have few ideas about this im not a pro)
Facades :
The Facade pattern is a software design pattern which is often used in object oriented programming. A facade is, in fact, a class wrapping a complex library to provide a simpler and more readable interface to it. The Facade pattern can also be used to provide a unified and well-designed API to a group of complex and poorly designed APIs.
A Laravel facade is a class which provides a static-like interface to services inside the container. These facades, according to the documentation, serve as a proxy for accessing the underlying implementation of the container’s services.
MORE
Contracts :
LARACASTS FREE VIDEO
I know this is not enough! what you are asking is complicated stuff a single answer can't be enough
Ok, so first I agree with the others that laracasts is an amazing resource, that will really go into greater detail and break things down very simply.
That being said, the brief overview is as follows:
Service Container (IoC container) is a laravel core process that allows you to load objects with their dependencies gracefully. For example, If I have a controller method like this:
public function update(Request $request, $id)
{
...
}
IoC container is smart enough to resolve the Request and load up all the dependencies associated with the Request class to make sure it gets instantiated properly.
It also allows you to instantiate classes without having to fully pass along all the dependencies as follows:
class ProductRepo(Product $product)
{
public function get($id)
{
...
}
}
I can reference this class without loading it with dependency injection as follows: (make sure to pass in full namespace)
app('App\ProductRepo')->get($id);
This allows me to not have to pass in a Product Object, Laravel is smart enough to resolve the Product object because the IoC container is doing the magic behind the scenes.
Service Providers are a place for you to lace in custom behavior when booting up or instantiating a class. For example, Laravel by default uses a class called the EventServiceProvider. This class's job is to configure the Event system in Laravel to make sure to include all the custom event listeners you create. So if I wanted to make sure that when the EventDispatcher is being loaded up, it brings in all the necessary dependencies.
Contracts are really simple. They are just an allusion to php object oriented concept of Interfaces. This concept states that there are classes that establish rules. For Example:
interface SearchableInterface
{
public function search($data);
}
class BinarySearch implements SearchableInterface
{
public function search($data)
{
...
}
}
This states that any class that implements the SearchableInterface, must have a function search that accepts one parameter. This creates a 'contract' that any classes that implement the SearchableInterface will have to have this function, or the application will throw an error.
This is great for using interchangeable pieces (siblings) and not having to worry that the class is missing a function you need.
Last but not least is the Facade. I love facades. In a nutshell all this is doing is creating a static representation of a class that was not defined statically. So lets say I have a class that will get a document from S3.
class S3
{
public function get($file)
{
...
}
}
Without a facade you would first have to instantiate and then call get on the class in order to get something from S3.
$s3 = new S3;
$s3->get('myAwesomeFile');
Laravel allows you to easily register Facades so that you can just use this statically for readability and convenience.
S3::get('MyAwesomeFile');
All of this has been an over-simplification of each concept, but goes into some detail about some of the basics of each concept. Hope this helps!
I am developing a package for Laravel 5, and now I need to benefit from dependency injection to have a more scalable and relaible application, I don't know which approach is the best to take and why, this is a piece of my code and I need to injected the Lang class dependency
class MyController extends \App\Http\Controllers\Controller
{
public $text;
public $lang;
public function __construct()
{
// Some codes here
}
public function myFunction(){
$this->text = \Lang::get('package::all.text1');
}
}
In this link http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/ioc 2 approaches are suggested, Basic Usage and Automatic Resolution based on my understanding from the link
taking the first approach I need to add
App::bind('lang', function($app)
{
return new \Lang();
});
to the register part of application and then in the function I'll have something
like this :
public function myFunction()
{
$lang = \App::make('lang');
$this->text = $lang::get('package::all.text1');
}
The other way is to modify the constructor like
public function __construct(Lang $lang)
{
$this->lang = $lang;
}
And then instantiate object from Class like
$myController = App::make('MyController');
Which way is the better way to take for, considering that this class is a Controller and it will be called in the routes file, or please correct me if my understanding from the link is not right. please also inform me why you suggest any of those approaches.
It should be noted that using local IoC resolution ($app->make() stylee) is not much better than using the facades directly (Lang::get() stylee) - you're still very much relying on Laravel's specific classes without really making your code explicitly state that it needs these exact classes. So the general advice is to, as much as possible, code to an interface if you want your code to be as portable as possible.
Of course there are a couple of big downsides to this currently in PHP development:
These interfaces are not generally defined (except the PSR-3 LoggerInterface interface) so you still have to rely on a particular instance of the interface (in this case, Laravel's).
If you decide to make your own generic interface (or the FIG eventually creates some of these), the classes that Laravel provides for translation (for example) don't implement it anyway, so you then need to subclass the existing ones just to make it look like it implements your own interface. But hey, that's the current best practice, so I guess if you wanna be using the current best practices, code to an interface, and don't worry for the time being that the interface you're coding to is Laravel-specific.
But anyway, here are my thoughts on your specific question. First off I should say that I haven't actually used Laravel 5 yet (just the 4s), but I have generally followed its development.
If the class I am coding will use a given dependency quite a lot or as a core part of how the class works I will use constructor dependency injection. Examples here are the Request or some Repository class in a controller, or a business logic class in a console command class.
If what I need I only need for a specific purpose (maybe redirecting from a controller and needing to generate a URI) I will resolve a local version from the IoC container ($this->app->make()) and then use that. If I were using Laravel 5 and the method was called by Laravel directly (e.g. a controller's action method) I may use method injection for this, I'm not 100% sure.
As a final note, the general advice is that if your constructor method signatures get too big due to a lot of dependencies:
It's time to have a look at if your code relies too much on external dependencies. Maybe some of the functionality of your class can be extracted to its own class that splits the dependencies between the two.
You should consider using setter methods rather than constructor injection - so instead of accepting a Request object, you have a $class->setRequest() method. The downside of doing this is that you need to tell Laravel's IoC container how to instantiate your object (i.e. that these setters must be called). It's not that big a deal but something worth noting.
Relevant links:
Laravel 5's IoC article
Laravel 5's Controller injection advice
I'm trying to use TDD when writing a class that needs to parse an XML document. Let's say the class is called XMLParser, and its constructor takes in a string for the path to the XML file to parse. I would like to have a Load() method that tries to load this XML into memory, and performs a few checks on the file such as file system errors, whether or not its an XML file, etc.
My question is about alternatives: I've read that it's bad practice to have private methods that you need to test, and that you should be able to just test the public interface and let the private methods do their thing. But in this case, this functionality is pretty important, and I don't think it should be public.
Does anyone have good advice for a scenario like this?
I suggest to redesign your architecture a bit. Currently, you have one high level class with low level functionality embedded. Split that into multiple classes that belong to different layers (I use the term "layer" very loosely here).
Example:
Have one class with the public interface of your current class. (-> High level layer)
Have one class responsible for loading files from disk and handling IO errors (-> Low level layer)
Have one class responsible for validating XML documents (-> Inbetween)
Now you can test all three of these classes independently!
You will see that your high level class will do not much more than just composing the two lower level classes.
Use no access modifier (which is the next up to private) and write the test in the same package.
Good OOD is important but for really important functionality testing is more important. Good practices are always only a guideline and they are good in the general scenario.
You could also try to encapsulate that specific file-checking behaviour in another object and have your parser instantiate it and use it. This is probably what I would do. In this way you could also even use this functionality somewhere else with minimal effort.
You can make a subclass as part of your test package that exposes public accessors to the private methods (which should then be protected).
Public class TestableClass : MyClass
{
public someReturnType TestMethod() {
return base.PrivateMethod();
}
}
I have a very simple question for MVC cause it is the first time i use it in my code.
I have 3 classes, the model, the view and the controller.
The question is :
Should I instantiate the classes separately and use them that way in my application or I can create a class that inherits this 3 classes and instantiate that class instead ?
Most importantly I don't want to violate the main MVC pattern.
You should instantiate the classes separately.
Moreover, it can pay to separate those classes into interfaces and implementation classes for later extensibility. For instance, if your model now reads date from file and later you need to be able to read the same kind of data from a database, you can then make a second implementation of your model class that implements the model interface. your controller that interacts with the model would then only need a change in how it instantiates its model. The rest of the controller implementation can remain the same (as it is has been written against the model interface).
Definitely three separate classes. The whole point of MVC is to have three classes that communicate (through the controller, which handles all the logic of the application). Creating a class that has all three in it would defeat the purpose of MVC.
In the more abstract way, inheritance should not be overused. With inheritance, you couple things together and make it harder to maintain. It contradicts with single resnponsibility principle (SRP) as well: "a class should have only one job".
Also, as any pattern, inheritance had better be only used it is neccessary and fits into the architecture correctly, for example: when there is a class Vehicle, classes Car, Bus and Truck should inherit Car: it is their nature.
So, in this current example, the answer is: It is correct to use model, controller and view classes separately, expecially when MVC pattern itself describes separating of these three parts :)
Forgive the vague title, I wasn't sure how to describe it.
If you have a generic model "Archive", how do you show different views/forms based on a user selected 'type'?
For example, the user creates a new "Archive", then gets the choice of video, book, audio etc. From there they get different forms based on the archive type.
Or would it be better to split them into different models - Video, Book, Audio?
Or can models inherit (like Video extends Archive). I guess this is basic OOP / classes, but have no idea how to apply that here.
Examples from any MVC framework are welcome!
Seems like you would not want to have the type inherit from Archive.
"Always favor encapsulation/containment over inheritance".
Why not create a class called Archive and give it a type property. The type can use inheritance to specialize for Audio, Video, etc.
It would seem that you would specialize Archive based on some other criteria. "FileSystemArchivce", "XMLArchive", "SQLArchive" and the type would not change. But the agilist in me says that this may not be necesscary at first, and you can always refactor the design later...
In terms of a controller, you probably get the biggest bang for the buck by encapsulating the differences of presentation for each type in the view. So only the view changes based on the type. Likely the semantics and rules for each one are the same and you would not need to have seperate controllers for each type. The views will be different for each type as it will have different attributes.
To actually show a different view should be easy in any MVC framework. For example, in Microsoft ASP.NET MVC you would not just return a view from a controller like the following:
return View();
but would actually state the name of the view as a parameter:
return View("VideoArchive");
which would then show the view from Views/Archive/VideoArchive.aspx
Your models Video, Book and Audio can inherit from Archive.
And each model will have a controller.
http://yourserver/Books/Edit/11
You will have to get your user to pick the type of archive they want before you create the corresponding model.
EDIT (in response to comment)
In ASP.NET MVC your model will be a class.
public class Video : Archive
{
public int Id {get;set}
public string Name {get;set;}
...
}
You will also have a controller
public class VideoController : Controller
{
public object Edit(int id)
{
Video myVideo = GetVideo(id);
return View("Edit", myVideo);
}
...
}
And you will have a view in the Views directory for example, the page which contains
public class Edit : View<Video>
{
...
}
So you can call this if you had a URL which was
http://localhost/Video/Edit/11
This was all done from memory, so there may be some mistakes, but the take-home message is that you specify the inheritance at the model. The model is just a class. In your case you want to inherit from Archive. Once you've done that the model is pass around as normal.
The Single Responsibility Principle (PDF) states that:
THERE SHOULD NEVER BE MORE THAN ONE REASON FOR A CLASS TO CHANGE.
Your Archive class violates this principle by handling multiple different types of archives. For example, if you need to update the video archive, you are also modifying the class that handles book and audio archives.
The appropriate way to handle this is to create separate classes for each different type of archive. These types should implement a common interface (or inherit a common base class) so that they can be treated interchangeably (polymorphically) by code that only cares about Archives, not specific archive types.
Once you have that class hierarchy in place, you just need a single controller and view for each model class.
For bonus points, the Single Responsibility Principle can even justify using a factory method or abstract factory for creating your model, view and controller objects (rather than new-ing them up inline). After all, creating an object and using that object are different responsibilities, which might need to be changed for different reasons.
Seems to me that one solid point in favor of MVC is that you may not need to customize the model (or the controller - of which you want only one) if all the user needs is a different view. Multiple models would appear only if the storage (persistence) architecture dictated a need for it. Some feature like data access objects (DAO) would potentially appear as another tier, between the controller and the model,should you require multiple models.
Take a look at the Apache Struts project for examples. As stated in Struts for Newbies, "To use Struts well, it's important to have a good grasp of the fundamentals. Start by reviewing the Key Technologies primer, and studying any unfamiliar topics."
For another resource, see Web-Tier Application Framework Design (Sun J2EE Blueprints)