Routing

• Basics
• Route parameters
• Route middleware
  • Defining middleware
  • Assigning middleware
  • Middleware priority
• Route groups
• Reverse routing
• Faking request methods

The Mako router lets you map URL patterns to class methods and closures. It also allows you to perform reverse routing so that you don't have to hardcode URLs in your application.

Routes are registered in the app/routing/routes.php file and there are three variables available in the scope, $routes (the route collection) and $app (the application instance) and $container (the IoC container instance).

Basics

The following route will forward all GET requests to the / route to the welcome method of the app\controllers\Homecontroller class.

$routes->get('/', 'app\controllers\Home::welcome');

If you want the route to respond to POST requests instead then you'll have to use the post method.

$routes->post('/', 'app\controllers\Home::welcome');

The available methods are get, post, put, patch, and delete.

You can also make a route respond to all request methods using the all method.

$routes->all('/', 'app\controllers\Home::welcome');

All routes will by default respond to requests made using the OPTIONS method. GET routes will also respond to HEAD requests.

If you only want to allow a specific set of methods then you can use the register method.

$routes->register(['GET', 'POST'], '/', 'app\controllers\Home::welcome');

Routes can also execute closures instead of class methods.

$routes->get('/hello-world', function()
{
	return 'Hello, world!';
});

Route parameters

You'll often want to send parameters to your route actions. This is easy and can be done like this.

$routes->get('/articles/{id}', function($id)
{
	return $id;
});

If you need to make a parameter optional then you can do so by adding the ? suffix.

$routes->get('/articles/{id}/{slug}?', function($id, $slug = null)
{
	return $id . ' ' . $slug;
});

You can also impose constraints on your parameters using the when method. The route will not be matched unless all constraints are satisfied.

$routes->get('/articles/{id}', function($id)
{
	return 'article ' . $id;
})
->when(['id' => '[0-9]+']);

Closure actions get executed by the Container::call() method so all dependencies are automatically injected.

$routes->get('/article/{id}', function(ViewFactory $view, $id)
{
	return $view->render('article', ['id' => $id]);
})
->when(['id' => '[0-9]+']);

Route middleware

Route middleware allows you to alter the request and response both before and after a route action gets executed.

Defining middleware

Middleware should (but is not required to) implement the MiddlewareInterface. The example below is the most basic middleware implementation (it doesn't actually do anything).

<?php

namespace app\routing\middleware;

use Closure;

use mako\http\Request;
use mako\http\Response;
use mako\http\routing\middleware\MiddlewareInterface;

class PassthroughMiddleware implements MiddlewareInterface
{
	public function execute(Request $request, Response $response, Closure $next): Response
	{
		return $next($request, $response);
	}
}

Middleware has to be registered in the app/routing/middleware.php file before you can use them. There are three variables available in the scope, $middleware (the middleware collection), $app (the application instance) and $container (the IoC container instance).

$middleware->register('passthrough', PassthroughMiddleware::class);

In the next example we'll create a middleware that returns a cached response if possible.

Note that all middleware is instantiated through the dependency injection container so you can easily inject your dependencies through the constructor.

<?php

namespace app\routing\middleware;

use Closure;

use mako\cache\CacheManager;
use mako\http\Request;
use mako\http\Response;
use mako\http\routing\middleware\MiddlewareInterface;

class CacheMiddleware implements MiddlewareInterface
{
	protected $cache;

	protected $minutes;

	public function __construct(CacheManager $cache, $minutes = null)
	{
		$this->cache = $cache;

		$this->minutes = $minutes ?? 10;
	}

	public function execute(Request $request, Response $response, Closure $next): Response
	{
		if(this->cache->has('route.' . $request->path()))
		{
			return $response->body($cache->get('route.' . $request->path()));
		}

		$response = $next($request, $response);

		$this->cache->put('route.' . $request->path(), $response->getBody(), 60 * $this->minutes);

		return $response;
	}
}

The cache example above is very basic and should probably not be used in a production environment.

Assigning middleware

Assigning middleware to a route is done using the middleware method. You can also pass an array of middleware if your route requires multiple middleware. Middleware will get executed in the order that they are assigned.

$routes->get('/articles/{id}', 'app\controllers\Articles::view')
->when(['id' => '[0-9]+'])
->middleware('cache');

You can also pass parameters to your middleware. In the example below we're telling the middleware to cache the response for 60 minutes instead of the default 10.

$routes->get('/articles/{id}', 'app\controllers\Articles::view')
->when(['id' => '[0-9]+'])
->middleware('cache("minutes":60)');

Middleware parameters are parsed as JSON. So booleans, strings, arrays, objects (associative arrays), null and numeric values are valid.

Middleware priority

As mentioned above, by default middleware get executed in the order that they are assigned to the route. You can however ensure the execution order by configuring middleware priority.

$middleware->setPriority(['cache' => 1, 'passthrough' => 2]);

In the example above we're making sure that the cache middleware gets executed first, followed by the passthrough middleware.

You can use middleware priority without having to configure all your middleware. Non-configued middleware will be assigned a default priority of 100. This means that if you have a middleware that you want executed last then you can set its priority to a value of 101 or above.

Route groups

Route groups are useful when you have a set of routes with the same constraints and middleware.

$options =
[

	'middleware' => 'cache',
	'when'       => ['id' => '[0-9]+'],
	'namespace'  => 'app\controllers',
];

$routes->group($options, function($routes)
{
	$routes->get('/articles/{id}', 'Articles::view');

	$routes->get('/photos/{id}', 'Photos::view');
});

All routes within the group will now have the same middleware and constraints. You can also nest groups if needed.

The following options are available when creating a route group. They are also available as chainable methods on individual routes.

Reverse routing

You can assign names to your routes when you define them. This will allow you to perform reverse routing, thus removing the need of hardcoding URLs in your views.

$routes->get('/', 'Home::Welcome', 'home');

The route in the example above has been named home and we can now create a URL to the route using the toRoute method of the URLBuilder class.

<a href="{{$urlBuilder->toRoute('home')}}">Home</a>

You can also pass parameters to your route URLs.

<a href="{{$urlBuilder->toRoute('articles.view', ['id' => 1])">Article</a>

Faking request methods

Most browsers only support sending GET and POST requests. You can get around this limitation by performing a POST request including a REQUEST_METHOD_OVERRIDE field where you specify the request method you want to use.

<input type="hidden" name="REQUEST_METHOD_OVERRIDE" value="DELETE">

Another solution is to send a X_HTTP_METHOD_OVERRIDE header.