Routes

The route creation is a fundamental task during the development of any web application. Luthier CI improves the routing of CodeIgniter so that building large applications is not excessively complicated.

Differences between CodeIgniter and Luthier CI routing

The way how routes are handled by CodeIgniter is modified by Luthier CI during its execution:

• In CodeIgniter, by default, routes are accessible through any HTTP verb. With Luthier CI it is mandatory to define the accepted HTTP verbs in each path.
• In CodeIgniter it is possible to access controllers without defining routes, while with Luthier CI only defined routes are detected.
• With Luthier CI each route is an independent and unique entity, with well-defined parameters and the ability to build URLs from them.
• With Luthier CI it is possible to use anonymous functions as controllers and even build a complete web application without using a single controller.

Types of routes

Three types of routes are available in Luthier CI:

• HTTP routes: accessed under HTTP requests and defined in the application/routes/web.php file.
• AJAX routes: accessed only under AJAX requests and defined in the application /routes/api.php file.
• CLI routes: accessed only under a CLI (Command Line Interface) environment and defined in the application/routes/cli.php file.

Syntax

If you have used Laravel then you will know how to write routes in Luthier CI, because its syntax is very similar. This is an example of a Luthier CI route:

Route::get('foo', 'bar@baz');

Where:

• foo is the route URL, and
• bar@baz is the name of the pointed controller and method, separated by @.

The Route::get() method states that the route accepts only GET requests.

You can define routes for the verbs GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS and TRACE using the following methods of the Route class:

Route::post('foo', 'bar@baz');
Route::put('foo', 'bar@baz');
Route::patch('foo', 'bar@baz');
Route::delete('foo', 'bar@baz');
Route::head('foo', 'bar@baz');
Route::options('foo', 'bar@baz');
Route::trace('foo', 'bar@baz');

You can pass an array with the route properties as a third argument:

Route::get('test', 'controller@method', ['prefix' => '...', 'namespace' => '...', (...)] );

: It is also possible to accept multiple HTTP verbs in a route, using the Route::match() method:

Route::match(['GET', 'POST'], 'path', 'controller@method', [ (...) ]);

Namespaces

The namespace property tells CodeIgniter the sub-directory where the controller is located:

// The controller will point to application/controllers/foo/Bar.php
Route::get('hello/world', 'bar@index', ['namespace' => 'admin']);

Prefixes

Use the prefix property to add prefixes to routes:

// The URL will be 'admin/hello/world'
Route::get('hello/world', 'testcontroller@index', ['prefix' => 'admin']);

Named routes

It is advisable to assign a name to your routes. This will allow you to build URLs in your views and controllers:

Route::get('company/about_us', 'testcontroller@index')->name('about_us');

To get a route by name use the route($name) function, where $name is the name of the route:

route('about_us');

Groups

Use the Route::group method($prefix,$routes) to define a group of routes, where $prefix is ​​the prefix and $routes is an anonymous function that contains the sub-routes:

Route::group('my_prefix', function(){
    Route::get('bar','test@bar');
    Route::get('baz','test@baz');
});

It is possible to assign properties to all routes within the group, using the syntax Route::group($prefix, $properties, $routes):

Route::group('prefix', ['namespace' => 'foo', 'middleware' => ['Admin','IPFilter']], function(){
    Route::get('bar','test@bar');
    Route::get('baz','test@baz');
});

Resource Routes

Resource paths are a shortcut to create the routing of CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete) for a controller.

To create a resource route, use the Route::resource($name,$controller) method, where $name is the name/prefix of the routes and $controller is the name of the controller:

Route::resource('photos','PhotosController');

Result:

[Name]                 [Path]               [Verb]          [Controller action]
photos.index           photos               GET             PhotosController@index
photos.create          photos/create        GET             PhotosController@create
photos.store           photos               POST            PhotosController@store
photos.show            photos/{id}          GET             PhotosController@show
photos.edit            photos/{id}/edit     GET             PhotosController@edit
photos.update          photos/{id}          PUT, PATCH      PhotosController@update
photos.destroy         photos/{id}          DELETE          PhotosController@destroy

It is possible to define partial resource routes, using the syntax Route::resource($name, $controller, $include), where $include is an (inclusive) array of the paths to be created:

Route::resource('photos','PhotosController', ['index','edit','update']);

Resultado:

[Name]                 [Path]               [Verb]          [Controller action]
photos.index           photos               GET             PhotosController@index
photos.edit            photos/{id}/edit     GET             PhotosController@edit
photos.update          photos/{id}          PUT, PATCH      PhotosController@update

Default controller

Luthier CI automatically sets any route defined with the / URL and the GET HTTP verb as the default controller.

You can explicitly define the default controller using the Route::set('default_controller', $name) method, where $name is the default controller:

Route::set('default_controller', 'welcome/index');

Anonymous functions as routes

It is not necessary to provide a controller/method name to define a route in Luthier CI. You can use anonymous functions (or closures) as controllers:

Route::get('foo', function(){
    ci()->load->view('some_view');
});

Route parameters

Parameters are dynamic sections of a route URL, allowing that multiple URLs resolves to the same route. To define parameters, enclose them between {keys}, for example: Los parámetros son secciones dinámicas de la URL de una ruta, haciendo posible que múltiples URLs resuelvan a la misma ruta. Para definir parámetros, enciérralos entre {llaves}, por ejemplo:

Route::post('blog/{slug}', 'blog@post');

Optional parameters

To set a parameter as optional, add a ? before closing the keys:

Route::put('categories/{primary?}/{secondary?}/{filter?}', 'clients@list');

Keep in mind that after the first parameter defined as optional ALL others parameters must be optional.

Regular expressions in parameters

You can limit the content of a route parameter to a specific character set:

Route::get('cars/{num:id}/{any:registration}', 'CarCatalog@index');

The num: and any: placeholders are equivalent to (:num) and (:any), respectively.

It is also possible to use a regular expression to define route parameters:

Route::get('main/{((es|en)):_locale}/about', 'about@index');

The above is equivalent to /^(is|en)$/.

Sticky parameters

When you work with route groups that define parameters, they must be declared as arguments in their controller methods recursively. Depending on the complexity of your application, the inherited parameters will accumulate, making the methods of your controllers have a very large number of arguments.

The sticky parameters helps you deal with this problem.

An adhesive parameter is any route parameter that begins with an underscore (_). They have the following properties:

• It is not necessary to define it in the arguments of the sub-routes controller methods.
• The value of the parameter will be taken from the URL and will be automatically supplied in the route() function, so it can be omitted, or overwritten by any other value.

Consider the following route group:

Route::group('shop/{_locale}', function()
{
    Route::get('category/{id}', 'ShopCategory@categoryList')->name('shop.category');
    Route::get('product/{id}/details', 'ShopProduct@details')->name('shop.product.details');
});

The shop.category and shop.product.details routes share the _locale sticky parameter and, while is still required to be in the URL, you can skip it when you build routes within this group:

// If the URL is 'shop/en/category/1', then {_locale} will be 'en' here:

echo route('shop.category', ['id' => 1]);
# shop/en/category/1

echo route('shop.category', ['id' => 2]); 
# shop/en/category/2

echo route('shop.category', ['id' => 3]); 
# shop/en/category/3

This is useful when you need to link to other variants of the current route:

echo route('shop.category', ['_locale' => 'es', 'id' => 1]); 
# shop/es/category/1

Within the ShopCategory and ShopProduct controllers, their methods will have a single argument: $id:

# application/controllers/ShopCategory.php
class ShopCategory extends CI_Controller
{
    public function categoryList($id)
    {
        // (...)
    }
}

# application/controllers/ShopProduct.php
class ShopProduct extends CI_Controller
{
    public function details($id)
    {
        // (...)
    }
}

To obtain the value of an adhesive parameter within a controller, use the param($name) method of the route property, where $name is the name of the parameter:

public function categoryList($id)
{
    $locale = $this->route->param('_locale');
}