Routing nested controllers using IoC for dependency injection in laravel 3

Question

update: if i can achieve same result using a different approach, please enlighten me.

I'm using/learning laravel 3 while building my project. Before coding any page-content at all, I'm verifying if i can deploy everything as planned, since this project is an actual rewrite of a rather huge app which is seriously outdated in the techniques it uses.

I'm struggling at this last part, which is quite possibly the hardest challenge i'll face to setup my project.

URL:

site.com/shops/__identifier__/controller/action/params

The above is the uri i'm trying to code atm. The _identifier_ part should become a model (eloquent based)

the shops is the base for nested controllers

ie:

controllers/
  - shops/
      - home.php
      - contact.php
      - products.php
      - etc ....

Each existing uri shops/identifier is a real site on its own. (though it has a different domain offcourse) I want all my nested shops controllers to know what shop they're working with. In fact, the identifier will be used to load the correct layouts, to render the correct images, contact details etc... From what i've read, i'll need to use the IoC functionality to inject the dependency of my shop-model into the constructor of my controller.

this is what i have atm:

file:application/start.php

/**
* Register IoC container for my nested shop controllers
*/
IoC::register('controller: shop', function($controller, $identifier)
{
    //also tried using same line without the \\
    $class = '\\Shops_' . ucfirst($controller) . '_Controller';
    return new $class($identifier);
});

file:application/routes.php

/**
 * Register all shop routes
 */
Route::any('/shops/(:any)/(:any?)/(:any?)', function($identifier, $controller = "home", $method = "index", $params = array()){
    if($controller === "index")
        $controller = "home";
    $controller = IoC::resolve('controller: shop', array($controller, $identifier));
    return $controller;
});

shop base-controller located at application/libraries/controllers/shop.php

<?php
namespace Controllers;
use Base_Controller;
/**
* Shop controller
*/
class Shop extends Base_Controller
{

    public function __construct($identifier){
        /**
         * @todo: load the shop model using the identifier
         * possibly move this after the parent::__construct()
         */
        parent::__construct();
    }

}

file: applications/controllers/shops/home.php

<?php
/**
 * @heads up: Shop_Controller is aliased in application/config/application.php
 */
class Shops_Home_Controller extends Shop_Controller 
{

    public function get_index(){
        return ('test');
    }

}

Problems:

• when defining my routes for these nested shops controllers. Do i simply return the controller laravel should use to resolve the request, or do i trigger the action myself in the callback function in that route definition?
• controllers aren't autoloading (when trying the implementation above), yet i'm using the correct conventions for those controllers (unless i'm missing something :-) ). I'm guessing this is because i'm using IoC, how do i cleanly implement this or what is my mistake?
• how do i trigger the correct action? It should, as expected, trigger the corresponding HTTP-verb action, since my nested controllers are also RESTFUL-controllers.
• extra question to keep things as clean as possible: 'index' defaults to home controller when not using IoC functionality. Is my solution (if-condition in routes.php) to mimic this functionality a clean one? or is there any better approach?

By all means:

• If my approach is way off, please tell me, i'm a newbie at laravel, and it's the first framework i'm using, so i'm a newbie at frameworks in general.

• I'd also like to apologize if my question isn't explained to well so feel free to ask extra info.

• I tried my best at googling this problem, but couldn't find anything similar, which is a first, since all my other laravel problems were easily solved using google.

I'd kindly thank anyone taking the time to read this and even better send me in the right direction!

Answer 1

Ok, final solution, this is far from clean if you ask me, but it seems to work, at least as far as i've checked.

I'm also not to sure if there is an alternative, but due to lack of response and timepressure, i decided to go with this and keep fingers crossed :(.

//start.php

IoC::register('controller: shop', function($id, $controllerName){
    //controller name is the name of the controller located in the shops map
    $class = "Shops_" . ucfirst($controllerName) . "_Controller";
    include(path('app') . 'controllers/shops/' . strtolower($controllerName) . '.php');
    return new $class($id);
});

//routes.php

Route::any("shops/(:any)/(:any?)/(:any?)/(:all?)", function($id, $controller = "index", $action = "index", $params = ""){
    if($controller === "index")
        $controller = "home";
    $params = explode('/', $params);
    $controller = IoC::resolve("controller: shop", array($id, $controller));
    $http_verb = Request::method();
        /**
         * Need to return this, and i now need to manually return every response in every action in every shop controller
         */
    return call_user_func_array(array($controller, $http_verb . '_' . $action), $params);
});

so example given

class Shops_Home_Controller extends Shop_Controller 
{

    public function get_index(){
        /**
         * this works when doing things the usual way, but will not return any output 
         * when working with nested dependency injection
         */
        $this->layout->nest('content', 'shops.index');
    }

    public function get_test(){
        /**
         * this needs to return layout object if it is to work with the nested dependency injection
         */
        $this->layout->nest('content', 'shops.index');
    }

}