[Solar-talk] Nested controllers

[Paul M Jones]

On Oct 19, 2006, at 9:11 AM, Travis Swicegood wrote:

> Hi Rodrigo,
>
> Rodrigo Moraes wrote:
>> On 10/1/06, Travis Swicegood wrote:
>>
>>> I'm curious to get some feedback on nested controllers.  I've  
>>> used them
>>> in another framework where your URL might be something like this:
>>>
>>> index.php/PageType/Controller/Action
>>>
>>> PageType was just another controller that allowed you to put  
>>> whatever
>>> your display level elements above the controller.  Some of the  
>>> PageTypes
>>> would be HTML, PDF, RSS, Mobile, etc., etc.  Generally these  
>>> acted like
>>> a sort of front controller.  You had access to them in the URL,  
>>> however,
>>> they were different in that they weren't required.  There was an
>>> abstract level front controller (we called it a dispatcher) that
>>> index.php started the process with.  Ideally in my mind, you  
>>> could chain
>>> controllers together indefinitely, though I don't know how  
>>> practical it
>>> would be.  Pragmatically, you just need the three levels with the  
>>> first
>>> and the last being optional.
>>>
>>
>> Ok, back to this subject. :)
>>
>> Does this idea evolved? It seems that putting PageType in the first
>> level is unnecessary. With nested (or "forwarding") controllers, the
>> last controller in the chain shouldn't be allowed to tell which
>> display should be rendered? How about this:
>>
>>     index.php/Controller/Action/PageType
>>
>
> Actually, no you wouldn't want it to execute that way.  Let me put the
> URI in a more understandable format:
>
>     index.php/PageType/Controller/Action
> is
>     index.php/HTML/Bookmarks/List
>
> So, the idea is that Bookmarks/List here generates a the actual  
> content
> while HTML, acting as the parent controller, wraps the content.  The
> same could be done with:
>
>     index.php/RSS/Bookmarks/List
>     index.php/PDF/Bookmarks/List
>     index.php/Bookmarks/List
>
> The last example without a pagetype would render just the raw
> Bookmarks/List.

I agree with Rodrigo's earlier comment that having the page-type  
first seems ... inelegant.

Besides page-types (html/rss/pdf/etc) and site layouts, what would  
this be used for?  I can think of other ways to respond to page-type  
requests that are more transparent, and for layouts we can put all  
the in the layout scripts.




--

Paul M. Jones  <http://paul-m-jones.com>

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