Routing

Whenever your browser gets a page on a Bolt website, it uses an URL like /entries or /page/lorem-ipsum. Bolt knows how to handle URLs like these, and displays the information the browser requested. Bolt does this by mapping the URL to a so-called Route.

This Route is the controller that (when called) fetches the content from the database, selects the template to use, renders the HTML page according to that template and the content and serves it to the browser.

At the same time, if you create a new record, Bolt will know what the URL for that content is. So when that URL is requested by a browser, it can map it back to the correct content.

For example, if you have a 'Pages' ContentType, with 'Page' as a singular_name, your site will automatically have pages like:

• http://example.org/pages
• http://example.org/page/lorem-ipsum-dolor

routes.yaml¶

Bolt stores the definition of these routes in the config/routes.yaml configuration file. This file is basically a Symfony configuration file, adapted for use with Bolt. Below you will find a complete description of the route definition in the YAML file.

The easiest way to add your own is to follow the examples defined in the distributed routes.yaml file. The order of the routes is important because it is a first-come first-serve architecture. So if you add your own ContentType routes, they will probably need to be defined before the general record route. Some routing examples are listed below.

Make old .html pages work¶

In this example we add routes to make old /contact.html links work with your new Bolt system.

oldpages:
  path: /{slugOrId}.html
  defaults:
    _controller: Bolt\Controller\Frontend\DetailController::record
    contentTypeSlug: pages
  requirements:
    slug: "[a-z0-9-_]+"

After adding this, a request for /welcome.html, will be handled by the correct Controller. It will know the requested slug is welcome, and it will render and display the page with that slug.

Host requirement¶

In this example we use the host requirement to show a specific page on the home of a particular host. The defaults are set to the regular record-action with a specific ContentType and slug set up.

example:
  path: /example
  defaults:
    _controller: Bolt\Controller\Frontend\DetailController::record
    contentTypeSlug: pages
    slugOrId: example
  host: www.example.org

ContentType overrides¶

This case overrides the default routing for single pages of different ContentTypes. Bolt will no longer create /page/{slug} links but will now create /{slug} routes. The old routes will still work, but the canonicals will be fixed to the new routes. The defaults are set to the regular record-action but we also added an additional contenttype: page line to tell Bolt to use this route for all records with ContentType page.

Note that doing this will make it impossible for you to have two records in different contenttypes that share the same slug. If there are duplicates of slugs, only one of those pages can be viewed on the website, since there is no way to differentiate them.

pagebinding:
  path: /{slugOrId}
  methods: [GET|POST]
  defaults:
    contentTypeSlug: page
    _controller: Bolt\Controller\Frontend\DetailController::record

An alternative is to also add the creation date:

pagebinding:
  path: /{datecreated}/{slugOrId}
  methods: [GET|POST]
  defaults:
    contentTypeSlug: page
    _controller: Bolt\Controller\Frontend\DetailController::record
  requirements:
    datecreated: '\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}'

Warning: to generate the correct new links to those pages using the |link filter in Twig, update your page ContentType definition by setting record_route: pagebinding. Otherwise, the |link filter will still use Bolt's default routes.

Single record override¶

This example overrides a single record to a specific URL. Useful if you only want to exempt a few pages and not a complete ContentType. This route should be high in the route list for it to work correctly.

aboutbinding:
  path: /about
  defaults:
    _controller: Bolt\Controller\Frontend\DetailController::record
    contentTypeSlug: about
    slugOrId: about-us

Filesystem based page generation¶

There is a way to configure the router to generate statically stored content. For the TemplateController::template default controller can be assigned a parameter template that points out a template that is stored as a regular file under currently selected theme in the filesystem.

templatebinding:
  path: /static-page
  defaults:
    _controller: Bolt\Controller\Frontend\TemplateController::template
    templateName: static-page.twig

Further reading¶

For more information about linking and routing in Bolt, please read the Bolt documentation on linking in templates.

For more in-depth documentation about Routing, please read Symfony's Routing documentation.