Add various helpers

[bakura10]

Hi,

To make template more easier to write, we should identify common patterns (even if opiniated). Some ideas I'm often using:

• A base built-in Criteria object that would come with additional functionalities. For instance, a pattern I like for sorting is using a query param "sort", in the following format: "sort=date,-id". This would sort by date in ascending order, then by id in descending order. The base Criteria could parse such strings.
• Helper for parsing "expand". If you have a not-so-simple APIs, having the ability to asking other resources is often absolutely vital. For instance, if you display a list of users, and want to display their associated subscriptions, you could ask the following request: "/users?expand[]=subscription". Internally, you could read this and do an optimized query to load the subscriptions. However, expand can be nested, so if you want to load the subscriptions WITH the plan: "/users?expand[]=subscription.plan".

In view rendering template, I'd like to be able to do that:

if ($this->hasExpand('subscription')) {
    $data['subscription'] = $this->renderResource('user/subscription', ['subscription' => $user->getSubscription(), 'expand' => $this->reduceExpand('subscription');
}

In the previous example, if the expand is "subscription.plan", then hasExpand will return true, and reduceExpand on 'subscription' will return 'plan' (the part that comes after subscription).

Any other ideas? ping @Orkin @danizord

[akaNightmare]

+1

[akaNightmare]

what the status of the issue?

[bakura10]

None for now, I'm not doing programming those times :(.