Yii's magic method for controlling all actions under a controller

Question

Commando need's help from you.

I have a controller in Yii:

class PageController extends Controller {
    public function actionSOMETHING_MAGIC($pagename) {
        // Commando will to rendering,etc from here
    }
}

I need some magic method under Yii CController for controlling all subrequest under /page || Page controller.

Is this somehow possible with Yii?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Sure there is. The easiest way is to override the missingAction method.

Here is the default implementation:

public function missingAction($actionID)
{
    throw new CHttpException(404,Yii::t('yii','The system is unable to find the requested action "{action}".',
        array('{action}'=>$actionID==''?$this->defaultAction:$actionID)));
}

You could simply replace it with e.g.

public function missingAction($actionID)
{
    echo 'You are trying to execute action: '.$actionID;
}

In the above, $actionID is what you refer to as $pageName.

A slightly more involved but also more powerful approach would be to override the createAction method instead. Here's the default implementation:

/**
 * Creates the action instance based on the action name.
 * The action can be either an inline action or an object.
 * The latter is created by looking up the action map specified in {@link actions}.
 * @param string $actionID ID of the action. If empty, the {@link defaultAction default action} will be used.
 * @return CAction the action instance, null if the action does not exist.
 * @see actions
 */
public function createAction($actionID)
{
    if($actionID==='')
        $actionID=$this->defaultAction;
    if(method_exists($this,'action'.$actionID) && strcasecmp($actionID,'s')) // we have actions method
        return new CInlineAction($this,$actionID);
    else
    {
        $action=$this->createActionFromMap($this->actions(),$actionID,$actionID);
        if($action!==null && !method_exists($action,'run'))
                throw new CException(Yii::t('yii', 'Action class {class} must implement the "run" method.', array('{class}'=>get_class($action))));
        return $action;
    }
}

Here for example, you could do something as heavy-handed as

public function createAction($actionID)
{
    return new CInlineAction($this, 'commonHandler');
}

public function commonHandler()
{
    // This, and only this, will now be called for  *all* pages
}

Or you could do something way more elaborate, according to your requirements.