SpiffyJr's Blogaroo

I’m in a bit of a hurry so this one will be short and sweet. I wanted to be able to use sexy uris (/your-homepage-rocks) instead of the lame-o /module/controller/action/id/# URIs. I also wanted error handling to work properly if they tried to access a page that didn’t exist so, what to do!? Build a controller plugin of course – ain’t (English police get me) they sexy?

// My\Controller\Plugin\Page.php

// I'm a huge-mongous fan of namespaces
namespace My\Controller\Plugin;
use Zend_Controller_Plugin_Abstract, Zend_Controller_Front;

class Page extends Zend_Controller_Plugin_Abstract
{
        // predispatch so that we can take over before routing kicks in
	public function preDispatch($request)
	{
		$front = \Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();
		$dispatch = $front->getDispatcher();

		// normally when something isn't dispatchable an exception is thrown and we're whisked away to the errorController
		if (!$dispatch->isDispatchable($request)) {
			$bootstrap = $front->getParam('bootstrap');
			$website = $bootstrap->getResource('website');

			// did we find a page?
			$page = \My\Service::getRepository('Website\Page')->findOneBy(
				array('website' => $website->getId(), 'slug' => $request->getControllerName()));

			if ($page) {
				// page exists, reroute by setting controller, action, and an additional "page" param
				$request->setModuleName('default')
					->setControllerName('page')
					->setActionName('index')
					->setParam('page', $page);
			}
		}
	}
}

// application\controllers\PageController

class PageController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
	// before dispatching, verify a few page properties
	public function preDispatch()
	{
		// grab the page from earlier - if it doesn't exist it will be handled with an exception
		$page = $this->_request->page;
		if (!$page || !$page->getPublished()) {
			// page must exist and be published
			throw new \My\Exception\NotFound();
		} elseif (!$page->isAllowed('read')) {
			// user must have read permission
			throw new \My\Exception\AccessForbidden();
		}

		// send it to the view to take care of
		$this->view->page = $page;
	}

	public function indexAction()
	{}
}

And, it works! You can handle the case where a page doesn’t exist as usual with the errorController. If a page does exist then everything is routed over to the pageController to display as normal. The only downside to this sexy magic is the additional query when an invalid request is dispatched. Fortunately, the overhead on that is minimal.

Greetings! Long time no post, I know. I’ve been busy with PetWise and Blitzaroo as well as the occasional game of Heroes of Newerth and/or WoW arenas. This little post will attempt to help those working with JsonRestStore (JRS) when their API doesn’t output exactly what JRS is expecting. What we’re going to be doing is extending dojox.data.JsonRestStore and creating our own store in its place while overriding the _processResults() method.

The first thing you will want to do is register a Dojo module path so that Dojo knows exactly where to find your custom store. In my example, I’m going to be using Zend Framework so in my application.ini file I simply include a line like resources.dojo.modulePaths.blitz = “/js/dojo/blitz”. We’ll also want to be sure that we require the appropriate class when working with our new store. You can do this globally in the application.ini by adding resources.dojo.requireModules[] = “blitz.data.JsonRestStore” or by adding it to whatever page the store will be used in.

Next, you’ll need to declare the class by creating the file. In my example, I create a file called JsonRestStore.js in /js/dojo/blitz/data.

// /js/dojo/blitz/data/JsonRestStore.js

dojo.provide("blitz.data.JsonRestStore");
dojo.require("dojox.data.JsonRestStore");

// declare the store extending from JsonRestStore
dojo.declare("blitz.data.JsonRestStore", dojox.data.JsonRestStore, {
        // process results takes the results from getQuery and turns them into something the store can handle
	_processResults:function(results, deferred) {
		// custom format for blitz api
		results = results.result; // this simple line causes JsonRestStore to work with my own API implementation
		// index the results
		var count = results.length;
		// if we don't know the length, and it is partial result, we will guess that it is twice as big, that will work for most widgets
		return {totalCount:deferred.fullLength || (deferred.request.count == count ? (deferred.request.start || 0) + count * 2 : count), items: results};
	}
});

Here’s a dump of my profiles API inside of Blitzaroo to show why this works. Notice that all the data comes from the result key which is why I have the line results = results.result. This allows me to include extra information about the request whenever the API is hit.

{
  -request: {
    uri: "/api/profiles"
    format: "json"
    action: "list"
  }
  -result: [
    -{
      id: 1
      userId: 1
      name: "Igatchew"
      private: false
      -created: {
        date: "2011-03-25 15:50:20"
        timezone_type: 3
        timezone: "America/Chicago"
      }
    -updated: {
        date: "2011-03-25 15:50:22"
        timezone_type: 3
        timezone: "America/Chicago"
      }
    }
   -{
      id: 2
      userId: 1
      name: "Snaggins"
      private: true
      -created: {
        date: "2011-03-25 20:32:34"
        timezone_type: 3
        timezone: "America/Chicago"
      }
      -updated: {
        date: "2011-03-25 20:32:36"
        timezone_type: 3
        timezone: "America/Chicago"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Hope that’s helpful!