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Extending / Intermediate / Controllers & Routes

Note: You are currently reading the documentation for Bolt 3.7. Looking for the documentation for Bolt 5.2 instead?

Depending on your requirements, there are two ways to create and manage routes for your Bolt extension:

  • Discrete route functions in the class loader for simple routes
  • Controller classes for more complex routing functionality

Route Callback Functions

Bolt provides extensions with two functions to register discrete routes:

  • registerFrontendRoutes()
  • registerBackendRoutes()

Both of these functions are passed a Silex\ControllerCollection object.

Routes registered via registerBackendRoutes() will automatically have the admin route added, which is /bolt/ by default.

An example of an extension using these descrete route functions:

namespace Bolt\Extension\DropBear\KoalaCatcher;

use Bolt\Extension\SimpleExtension;
use Silex\Application;
use Silex\ControllerCollection;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;

/**
 * An extension for catching koalas.
 *
 * @author Kenny Koala <kenny@dropbear.com.au>
 */
class KoalaCatcherExtension extends SimpleExtension
{
    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    protected function registerFrontendRoutes(ControllerCollection $collection)
    {
        // All requests to /koala
        $collection->match('/koala', [$this, 'callbackKoalaCatching']);
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    protected function registerBackendRoutes(ControllerCollection $collection)
    {
        // GET requests on the /bolt/koala route
        $collection->get('/koala', [$this, 'callbackKoalaAdmin']);

        // POST requests on the /bolt/koala route
        $collection->post('/koala', [$this, 'callbackKoalaAdmin']);
    }

    /**
     * @param Application $app
     * @param Request     $request
     *
     * @return Response
     */
    public function callbackKoalaCatching(Application $app, Request $request)
    {
        return new Response('Drop bear sighted!', Response::HTTP_OK);
    }

    /**
     * @param Application $app
     * @param Request     $request
     *
     * @return Response
     */
    public function callbackKoalaAdmin(Application $app, Request $request)
    {
        if ($request->isMethod('POST')) {
            // Handle the POST data
            return new Response('Thanks, Kenny', Response::HTTP_OK);
        }

        return new Response('Welcome to your admin page, Kenny', Response::HTTP_OK);
    }
}

Note:If you've added a menu entry in your extension, it will be mounted on extend/, because it shows up under the 'Extras' menu option. When adding an accompanying route for it, make sure to catch it correctly. For example, a menu with route 'koala', will match /extend/koala in your controller.

Controller Callback Classes

When extensions grow larger and have more complex routing requirements, it is without doubt better to implement a controller class.

Controller classes need to implement the Silex\ControllerProviderInterface interface contract.

Bolt provides two functions to register controller classes:

  • registerFrontendControllers()
  • registerBackendControllers()

Controllers registered via registerBackendControllers() will automatically have the admin route added, which is /bolt/ by default.

An example of an extension registering these controller classes would look like:

namespace Bolt\Extension\DropBear\KoalaCatcher;

use Bolt\Extension\SimpleExtension;

/**
 * An extension for catching koalas.
 *
 * @author Kenny Koala <kenny@dropbear.com.au>
 */
class KoalaCatcherExtension extends SimpleExtension
{
    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    protected function registerFrontendControllers()
    {
        return [
            '/dropbear' => new Controller\DropBearController(),
        ];
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    protected function registerBackendControllers()
    {
        return [
            '/dropbear' => new Controller\DropBearController(),
        ];
    }
}

The controller class file src/Controller/DropBearController.php would then look something like:

namespace Bolt\Extension\DropBear\KoalaCatcher\Controller;

use Bolt\Controller\Base;
use Silex\Application;
use Silex\ControllerCollection;
use Silex\ControllerProviderInterface;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;

/**
 * The controller for Drop Bear routes.
 *
 * @author Kenny Koala <kenny@dropbear.com.au>
 */
class DropBearController extends Base
{
    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    public function addRoutes(ControllerCollection $c)
    {
        $c->match('/koala/{type}', [$this, 'callbackKoalaCatching']);

        return $c;
    }

    /**
     * @param Request $request
     * @param string  $type
     *
     * @return Response
     */
    public function callbackKoalaCatching(Request $request, $type)
    {
        if ($type === 'dropbear') {
            return new Response('Drop bear sighted!', Response::HTTP_OK);
        }

        return new Response('Koala in a tree!', Response::HTTP_OK);
    }
}

The route will then then be accessed via /dropbear/koala/{type} for frontend controllers or /{admin_path}/dropbear/koala/{type} for backend controllers.

Note that the {admin_path} value by default will be "bolt", unless you have changed the path: value in your branding configuration, in which case it will reflect that value.



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