humblewebdev / Dash

Router prototype for Zend Framework 3

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This package is the router prototype for Zend Framework 3. It isn't by any means complete yet, but evolving quickly. It was just quickly hacked together so it can be demonstrated at ZendConEU.

Right now it is not usable within Zend Framework 2, but a simple bridge class can be created to make it work.

Route Configuration

Route configuration is greatly simplified from ZF2, routes now have an (optional) 4 key indexed array as the first 4 parameters, the format for the shortcut parameters are:

[path, action, controller, methods]

This may feel counter intuitive, but the idea is that the most frequently changed parameter appears earliest in the order so that when defining child routes you can skip parameters you wish to inherit.

path, action and controller will expect a string, whereas method will expect either an array of methods this route should match, a single method in a string, or a string of '*' for all methods. An empty string '' will match no methods. Currently, passing no method defaults to 'get'.

Along with the indexed shortcut parameters, named configuration can also be passed using key value pairs:

[
    'path' => '/foo',
    'action' => 'bar',
    'controller' => 'FooController',
    'methods' => ['get', 'post']
]

Parameters and named values can be mixed, although the first 4 indexed items will always to be presumed to be the parameters as ordered above.

Child Routes

Child routes can be simply defined in the children key of the configuration of the parent route:

'dash_router' => [
    'routes' => [
        'user' => ['/user', 'user', 'index', 'children' => 
        [
            'create' => ['/create', 'Application\Controller\UserController', 'create', ['get', 'post']],
            'edit' => ['/edit/:id', 'edit', 'Application\Controller\UserController', ['get', 'post'], 'constraints' => ['id' => '\d+']],
            'delete' => ['/delete/:id', 'edit', 'Application\Controller\UserController', 'constraints' => ['id' => '\d+']],
        ]],
    ],
],

Route Types

The router no longer has mulitple route types, instead the Generic route handles all aspects of HTTP routing. Instead of specificing the route type in the configuration, the router now knows how to handle all routes based solely on the configuration.

For example, if you want a given route only to match a specific hostname, simply define the correct key value pair in that route's configuration:

'user' => ['/user',  index', 'Application\Controller\UserController', ['get'], 'hostname' => 'login.example.com']

Similarly, if a given route should only match the https protocol:

'user' => ['/user', index', 'Application\Controller\UserController', ['get'], 'secure' => true]

Overloading

One confusion that's anticipate to be a minor problem is the confusion of how to overload a given route parameter from within a different module. This is easily achieved by defining the relevant key\value in the configuration that is intended to override the route. Overwriting a route parameter by the shortcut key will not take effect because it will only be added to the end of the configuration array

Module A
'user' => ['/user', index', 'Application\Controller\UserController', ['get']]

Module B
'user' => ['path' => '/userinfo']

/user now will no longer match, but /userinfo will match in it's place.