Background
I use the word widget as a partial view that have its own controller (so its own actions) and it is placed in almost all pages. I implement the rendering of this via HMVC, that is just great.
Problem
Now, the problem is that the widget itself execute actions. Think about a shopping cart widget. That widget is placed in all pages so the user can see his/her stuff all along. And the widget have actions that are related to it, for instance: RemoveItem, RefreshCart, ApplyDiscountCoupon, etc. Such actions should trigger by a button or link and the link should be something like (in HMVC):
<a href='<?site_url()?>/cart/cart/removeitem/the_item_id'>Remove this item</a>
Ok. Now the user clicks that link, the cart module and cart controller are loaded and the action is executed, the action should look something like:
function removeitem($itemid)
{
// remove the item from db
...
// "load the view" ???
}
As you can see, my question is how to load the view in a HMVC module. The thing is that if I only load the cart view, it will only show my cart, and I can’t just redirect or load the main page because it can be any main page, that is: the cart could be in any main page (select product, keep buying, see product details, billing info, checkout, etc). :/
Another thing: a requirement is that I can’t use AJAX in this project.
Do you know how HMVC handle this?
Thanks in advance.
Ok. No luck with the community. Nevertheless I found a workaround. Hope would be helpful to someone.
HMVC doesn't have a natural solution to this. So I decided to use this workaround:
Into each main controller (that is, no widget, no partial view) I grab the current url in session this way (/controllers/keep_buying.php):
class Keep_buying extends Controller
{
function Keep_buying()
{
parent::Controller();
$this->session->set_userdata('main_uri', uri_string());
}
...
}
Then in my partial view widget (HMVC module view) I have a normal link to my widget controller (/modules/cart/views/cart_show.php):
<a class="button" href="cart/cart/additem">Add Item</a>
At the controller action (HMVC module controller action) I retrieve the current main page, do stuff and then redirect to that page, that implicitly will get into my widget flow (due to HMVC).
class Cart extends Controller
{
...
function additem()
{
$to_redirect = $this->session->userdata('main_uri');
// add-item work stuff...
redirect($to_redirect);
}
}
That is. Is not the ideal approach IMHO, but works.
I know that this topic is over a year old, however I have been Googling to gain some more insight into the structure an HMVC program should take, and how it can be implemented in CI, and have not found very many answers.
I'm pretty sure that for HMVC to work properly, with several widgets incorporated on all pages of a site, they need to be orchestrated by one main controller. This will be the top level of the heirarchy. Let me try to give an example:
You have a site with a shopping cart widget on every page. When you wish to use the cart functionality, you will need to link to methods in the cart module, e.g.:
add
The problem using this link is that you do not want to reload the rest of the site from that module. Instead, you can route the link through your main controller and have it reload the module, calling the desired method. e.g.
add
Then in the site controller, it will simply pass the method call to the main view
<?php
function cart_add($item){
$data['cart'] = 'cart/add/'.$item;
$this->load->view('main', $data);
}
?>
The view will call the cart widget with the following:
<?php echo modules::run($cart); ?>
Obviously this is a simplified explanation, and the main site controller will be handling several widgets in one main view, so passing the correct data will need to be managed better than just calling the main view from within a method. But hopefully this gives an idea of the structure I am referring to.
If anyone reads this and thinks I'm wrong, I would love to hear other solutions people have found to this issue.
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'm still learning Laravel and I'm working on a small project to help me understand better. In the project, I am in need of a global array, so that I may display it or its attributes on every view rendered. sort of on a notification bar, so that each page the user visits, he/she can see the number of notifications (which have been fetched in the background and are stored in the array).
I have done some research, and realized that I have to fetch and compile the array in a view composer I think. But everywhere I go, I cant seem to understand how to make a view composer.
I need to fetch the relevant rows from the database table, and make the resulting array available to each view rendered (I'm thinking attaching it somehow to my layouts/default.blade.php file.). Please help, any and all advice is greatly appreciated:)
You can now inject services on your view
More info here: https://laracasts.com/series/whats-new-in-laravel-5-1/episodes/2
You have to use Sub-Views of laravel blade. I guess your functionality is like a sidebar or like a top bar which will be rendered at every page.
//Your Controller pass data
class YOUR_CONTROLLER extends Controller {
public function index()
{
$data = YOUR_DATA;
return view('YOUR_VIEW_FILE', get_defined_vars());
}
}
//In Your View File
#extends('LAYOUTS_FILE')
#section('YOUR_SECTION')
#include('YOUR_SUB_VIEW_FOR_NOTIFICATION')//You need not pass any data passed all data will be available to this sub view.
#endsection
In your sub view
//Do what ever you want looping logic rendering HTML etc.
//In your layout file just yield or render the section that's it
#yield('YOUR_SECTION')
More explanation can be found Including Sub-Views
The question title is confusing I know, cannot put better way to describe my situation... I have quite some routes for ecommerce website, and I'm using blade templating system so that there is a header.blade.php that is being used for all my page of this site. In the header, there's a shopping cart icon, when hovers on it, all the products that are in the shopping cart for the current user would show up. Problem is with all the routes that goes to some page that contains this header template, I have to add
$shopping_cart_info = ProductController::getShoppingCartInfo();
return View::make('somePageView')->with('shopping_cart_info', $shopping_cart_info);
for each and every one of them in the corresponding controller function, and there are more than 50 routes that require to do so... Is there a way to group these routes to let them all have the $shopping_cart_info so that I don't have to add it one by one?
Sure thing, except you don't do it in the routes. It's called a view composer, and it works like this:
// adds shopping cart info to the view
View::composer(['some.view.1', 'some.view.2'], function($view){
$shopping_cart_info = ProductController::getShoppingCartInfo();
$view->with('shopping_cart_info', $shopping_cart_info);
});
Now, the views "some.view.1" and "some.view.2" will both contain the shopping cart info variable. You can have as many views as you'd like there. In your case, it sounds like you have one view which uses it but which is called from loads of places. View composers were created just for that sort of thing! :)
For a smaller project, I typically create a file app/composers.php and autoload it from the app/global.php file like so: require app_path().'/composers.php';
Documentation: http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/responses#view-composers
I am looking for the way to refresh a template inside a view rendered from another controller than the template's controller, I mean:
I got two controllers AdminController & UserController. And two gsps /admin/listUsers & /user/_searchResult.
Then a want to render view listUsers who have inside the template _searchResult and all right.
Now, i want to refresh the template _searchResult, but cant find how. I tryed calling render(view:"/admin/listUsers", template:"/user/_searchResult", model:[searchResult:result])
AdminController.groovy
#Secured(['ROLE_ADMIN'])
def listUsers(){
//...
}
UserController.groovy
#Secured(['ROLE_ADMIN'])
def search(){
//search users for the givven params and send result by chain if there's an action or update a template if it's needed
//in my case this method need to update the template _searchResult
}
#Secured(['ROLE_ADMIN'])
def searchResult(){
//...
[searchResult:result]
}
listUsers.gsp
//...
<formRemote name="searchForm" url="[action:"search", controller:"user"]">
//Some fields for the search
//I need to place here some hidden inputs to send which
//template i want to update or action to redirect
</formRemote>
<g:render template="/user/_searchResult"/>
//...
_searchResult.gsp
//Just itterate and print the search result in a table
I hope I have explained the problem correctly, thanks!
I don't think I entirely understand your question, but I think the source of your confusion is that the way you are naming things doesn't follow regular conventions and you're not using the right tools for the job. Let me explain...
The methods on Controllers are called Actions. They send some data (the Model) to a View to be rendered into HTML. Views can be composed from smaller, reusable fragments called Templates. (sorry if I sound like I'm being condescending here, but I'm just trying to make sure we're all on the same page).
Now, what you've called templateA is actually a View, not a Template. You're correct that templateA (your View) can call templateB to render some markup, but then having the templateB try to call a method on another Controller doesn't make sense. That's not how things flow.
If you have some logic that needs to be executed after you've sent your Model to the View, you want to use a Tag Library (http://grails.org/doc/latest/guide/theWebLayer.html#taglibs).
To summarise, here's a quick recap.
A request should only call one Action, which sends the model to only one view.
If you need to reuse logic between Controllers, move that code to a Service.
If you need to reuse markup between Views, move that markup to a Template.
If you have logic that you want to have executed after you've sent the Model to the View, use a Tag Library.
Hopefully this will point you in the right direction.
--- UPDATE ---
OK, with the real code I can see better what you're trying to achieve. Firstly, as you're using the <g:formRemote> tag, you should have a good read of the docs at http://grails.org/doc/latest/ref/Tags/formRemote.html to understand what it does.
What you will have here is 2 separate requests. The first will be a regular page load by your browser, which is handled by the listUsers() action. Once the page is then finished loading, the user will enter a search term and hit the submit button. This will fire off a second ajax request, which will be handled by the search() action. This action could use the _searchResult.gsp template to render a HTML table to display the search results. When the browser get this, it will insert it into the DOM where you've told it to put it using the "update" attribute of the <g:formRemote> tag.
The important thing here is that from the server's perspective, these are 2 separate requests that are completely independent. They both first call an action, then send a model (a Map containing some data) to a view, which renders/merges the data with HTML and sends it back to the browser.
The difference between the 2 is that the first is a complete page load by the browser, whereas for the second request, the browser only loads a small chunk of HTML (the search results table) and updates the page content without reloading it.
So your code would look more like this...
AdminController.groovy
#Secured(['ROLE_ADMIN'])
def listUsers() {
render(view:"/admin/listUsers")
}
listUsers.gsp
<g:formRemote name="searchForm" update="insertSearchResultsHere"
url="[controller: 'user', action:'search']">
<input name="searchTerm" type="text" />
</g:formRemote>
<div id="insertSearchResultsHere"></div>
UserController.groovy
#Secured(['ROLE_ADMIN'])
def search() {
// use the search term to get a List<User>
render(template: "/user/searchResult", model: [users: users])
}
_searchResult.gsp
<table>
<g:each var="user" in="${users}">
%{-- Iterate through your search results --}%
</g:each>
</table>
I solved it by placing the attribute update and rendering the template alone:
gsp:
<formRemote name="searchForm" url="[action:"search", controller:"user"]" update="divToUpdate">
//Some fields for the search
</formRemote>
<div id="divToUpdate">
<g:render template="/user/_searchResult"/>
</div>
Controller:
def search(){
render(template:"/user/_searchResult", model:[searchResult:result])
}
When i asked this question, i was new on Grails community and i was confused with the use of remoteFunction and tags that use it like remoteForm. But i had this confusion because of i had not read the documentation. So in my case, the solution was search for documentation about how to use remote tags and render. Thanks to #AndrewW for show me the way.
Are it in any way possible to execute another action in the same on in another controller from an action, action filter or in any other way without doing a physical redirect.
The reason for this is that I have a dynamic paging system, where the user will load a url, for an example
/1/some-page-title
This url is maped to the controller “Home” and the action “Element”, this action will then load a row from the database where the element id is “1”. Depending from the data on the element from the database will the page be rendered as a contact form, an image gallery and so on.
Now I could map the paths so
/Page/1/some-title/ will render a normal html page,
/Contact/1/some-title/ will render a contact form
/Gallery/1/some-title/ will render a gallery
But I would prefer the paths to be simple.
There are problems with this answer, it's been a long time since I did anything thing with ASP MVC, so I'm not actually aware of what the problems are.
Unfortunately I can't delete an accepted answer.
So, I'm striking through the answer as it was, if you can actually answer this, or make it better, please do so.
Yes, very simple really :)
Say you're in controller C action A. You want to "redirect" to controller B action Z, just call the other controller action from the current one, returning it's result.
public ActionResult A()
{
return B.Z()
}
You may be looking for Html.RenderAction or Html.Action. However, these are used in the view and not the controller.