Router Component

Router component is used for mapping defined paths/urls to appropriate controllers or services.

Install the component

The best way to install the component is using Composer.

composer require webiny/router

For additional versions of the package, visit the Packagist page.

Usage

Defining a route is a rather easy process, you set a route name and underneath you define the path and the callback. Here is an example:

    Router:
        Routes:
            BlogTag:
                Path: blog/tag/{tag}
                Callback: MyApp\Blog\showTag
            BlogComments:
                Path: blog/post/{id}/comments
                Callback:
                    Class: MyApp\Blog
                    Method: showComments
            BlogPost:
                Path: blog/post/{slug}/{id}
                Callback: MyApp\Blog\showPost
                Options:
                    slug:
                        Pattern: .*?
            BlogAuthor:
                Path: blog/authors/{author}
                Callback: MyApp\Blog\showAuthorPosts
                Options:
                    author:
                        Default: webiny
            Blog:
                Path: blog
                Callback: MyApp\Blog\index

If a route is matched you will get an instance of MatchedRoute. The getCallback method returns the value of callback parameter of the matched route. The second method getParams returns the values of the parameters defined in the Path section.

By registering a default Router configuration, Router will automatically set the defined routes and cache driver.

    Router::setConfig($pathToYourConfig);

Later on you can use the RouterTrait access that Router instance.

NOTICE: When defining the routes in your config file, make sure that you put routes with lesser precision to the bottom, and routes with a more stricter rules at the top. A common pitfall is that a route with more wider pattern is matched before a route with a more stricter rules due to the fact that the Router loops over the defined routes in the same order that they are defined inside the config file, and it stops once the first route is matched.

Options

The Options attribute under the route provides you two additional options that you can set under each route.

Pattern

The default regex pattern for matching a variable is {[\w-]+}. Using the Pattern attribute you can set your own rule.

Default

The Default attribute gives you the option to set the the default value for a variable.

If the route is not matched using the current available properties from the url path, Router will replace all the variable patterns with the default values and try to match the route again.

Matching routes

To check if a route matches the given path, use the RouterTrait and then just call $this->router()->match() method. The match method takes either a string that is representing a url or it can take an instance of Url standard object. If the router successfully matches one of the routes it will return an array with callback and params attributes. If the router doesn't match any of the routes, it will return false.

class MyClass
{
	use \Webiny\Component\Router\RouterTrait;

	function __construct(){
		$result = $this->router()->match('blog/tag/some_tag');
		$result = $this->router()->match('http://www.webiny.com/blog/post/some-post/12');
	}
}

NOTE: Router component always returns the first route that matches the given path.

Executing route callback

If you define your callback as string, you will have to parse and execute it on your own. But if you follow the standard structure of your callback you will be able to use router's execute method and pass your MatchedRoute to it. Router will then execute the callback for you and do all the checks regarding class and method existence:

BlogComments:
    Path: blog/post/{id}/comments
    Callback:
        Class: MyApp\Blog
        Method: showComments

class MyClass
{
	use \Webiny\Component\Router\RouterTrait;

	function __construct(){
		$result = $this->router()->match('blog/post/12/comments');
		if($result){
		    $callbackResult = $this->router()->execute($result);
		}
	}
}

If for some reason you need to call the method statically, define your route callback like this:

BlogComments:
    Path: blog/post/{id}/comments
    Callback:
        Class: MyApp\Blog
        Method: showComments
        Static: true

Generating routes

With the Router your don't have write the urls inside your code or views, instead you can generate the urls from the given route like this:

class MyClass
{
	use \Webiny\Component\Router\RouterTrait;

	function __construct(){
		$url = $this->router()->generate('BlogTag',  ['tag'=>'html5', 'page'=>1]);
		// http://www.webiny.com/blog/tag/html5/?page=1
		// page was not defined in the route, that's why it's appended as a query param

		$url = $this->router()->generate('BlogAuthor');
		// http://www.webiny.com/blog/authors/webiny
		// the value of "author" was not set, so the generator used the default value
	}
}

You see that Router replaced the {tag} parameter with the provided value, in this case it was html5. You can also notice that the page parameter isn't defined in our route, so the Router appended that parameter as a query string.

Configuration

The Router component takes one additional configuration parameter, and that is the Cache parameter. If either defines the name of the cache service that will be used to cache some of the internal mechanisms, or you can set it to false if you don't want the component to use cache.

Router:
    Cache: TestCache

Using the cache can speed up matching of routes, especially more complex ones.

Resources

To run unit tests, you need to use the following command:

$ cd path/to/Webiny/Component/Router/
$ composer.phar install
$ phpunit