I am building an application using Play for Model and Controller, but using backbone.js, and client side templating. Now, I want the html templates to be served by Play without any backing controller. I know I could put my templates in the public directory, but I would like to use Play's templating engine for putting in the strings in my template from the message file. I do not need any other data, and hence dont want the pain of creating a dummy controller for each template. Can I do this with Play?
You could create a single controller and pass in the template name as a parameter, but I am not sure if it is a good idea.
public static void controller(String templateName) {
// add whatever logic is needed here
renderTemplate("Controller/"+templateName+".html");
}
Then point all your routes to that controller method. Forget about reverse routing, though.
I think I would still rather have a separate controller method for each template. Remember that you can use the #Before annotation (see Play Framework documentation) to have the message string handling in exactly one place, that is executed before each controller method. By using the #With annotation you can even have this logic in a separate class.
You can use template engine from any place in your code:
String result = TemplateLoader.load("Folder/template.html").render(data);
Related
I am trying to write a custom src/templates/scaffolding/Controller.groovy and was wondering if there was any way to get access to the controller name? Right now it seems like you can only get the "model" class. The reason I need it is I am customizing the render to prefix the templates directory based on the controller.
For instance I have a controller named AuthorAdminController and I need to customize the list to use the /admin/user/** directory.
Let me know if you have any questions. I am getting ready to look into how to customize DefaultGrailsTemplateGenerator but I am not sure if that is the correct route to go.
Example:
class UserAdminController {
static scaffold = User
}
Currently in my Controller.groovy I get className='user' so I have no access to the controller.
I don't think you can, as the way scaffolding works your template will always be generating a class named DomainClassNameController (i.e. UserController in your example), which gets loaded into a new classloader and then the metaclass of the real controller (UserAdminController) gets new actions added to it which delegate to an instance of the generated UserController.
Now every controller has access to the controllerName property during execution of actions, so this may provide you with a workaround. I haven't tried it, but you could try putting a log.info("controller: \${controllerName}") into the template and see which name it gives you (the backslash to make it resolve at runtime rather than generation time).
Can i access #Umbraco.getDictionaryItem Helper in my Custom Controller in my custom Area and then add it to the model of the custom partial page which i am rendering through plain jquery Ajax.
And also it would b great if i can access it in my Surface Controller plugin.
Thanks,
Sher
You should be able to access it in your server side files, yes. You just need to make sure you have a reference to the correct Umbraco DLLs in your project (not 100% sure off the top of my head which DLL the method resides in though, you'll have to look that up in the source).
Create your custom controller as Surface Controller, and obtain the IRoutableRequestContext,
public class propertydetailsController : SurfaceController
{
private IRoutableRequestContext _routableRequestContext;
}
then access the Dictionary helper class in Umbraco.Cms.Web.Dictionary, sample code is below.
DictionaryHelper dictionaryHelper = new DictionaryHelper(_routableRequestContext.Application);
string valueDictionary = dictionaryHelper.GetDictionaryItemValueForLanguage("DictionaryName", "en-GB");
Cheers
I have found a dozens of threads about getting the name of the controller and method based on the url, I managed that just as well. Can I get the MethodInfo of the method based on their name automatically from the MVC engine, or do I have to do Type.GetType("Namespace.Controllers."+cname+"Controller").GetMethod(mname)? Which is not so nice, since how do I know the namespace in a framework class? How do I know if the default naming patterns are being observed, or is there a different config in use?
I want to get a "What Would MVC execute?" kind of result....
Is it possible?
EDIT: further info:
I have a framework which uses translatable, data-driven urls, and has a custom url rewriting in place. Now it works perfectly when I want to show the url of a news object, I just write #Url.Content("~/"+#Model.Link), and it displays "SomeNewsCategory/SomeNews" instead of "News/29" in the url, without the need to change the RouteTable.Routes dynamically. However in turn there is a problem when I try to write RedirectToAction("SomeStaticPage","Contact"); into a controller. For that, I need to register a static link in db, have it target "/SomeStaticPage/Contact", and then write
Redirect("~/"+DB.Load(linkid).Link); and that's just not nice, when I have 30 of these IDs. The web programmer guy in the team started registering "fake urls", which looked like this:
public class FakeURL
{
public string Controller;
public string Action;
public int LinkID;
}
and then he used it like Redirect(GetFakeUrl("controller","action")); which did the trick, but still was not nice. Now it got me thinking, if I apply a [Link(linkid)] attribute to each statically linked method, then override the RedirectToAction method in the base controller, and when he writes ReturnToAction("action","controller"), I'll actually look up the attribute, load the url, etc. But I'm yet to find a way to get the methodInfo based on the names of the controller and the action, or their url.
EDIT: I've written the reflection by myself, the only thing missing is getting my application's assembly from inside a razor helper, because the CallingAssembly is the dinamically compiled assembly of the .cshtml, not my WebApplication. Can I somehow get that?
To answer your edit, you can write typeof(SomeType).Assembly, where SomeType is any type defined in code in the project (eg, MvcApplication, or any model or controller)
Also, you can write ControllerContext.Controller.GetType() (or ViewContext) to get the controller type of the current request EDIT That's not what you're trying to do.
I found out that it was totally wrong approach. I tried to find the type of the controller based on the name, when instead I had the type all along.
So instead of #Url.Action("SomeAction","SomeController") I'll use #Url.MyAction((SomeController c)=>c.SomeAction()), so I won't even have to find the controller.
I am attempting to construct an asp.net mvc app which will use the urls like:
/Controller/[Number]/Action/Id
I have got it to always call my controller and pass it the Number and the Id fine...
However I now want to return a different view depending on the Number
I could have options like:
if([Number] == 1) { return View("ViewName");}
if([Number] == 2) { return View("ViewName2");}
however I instead was wondering if there was a way to change the core so that instead of searching at ~/Views/controller/action.aspx I could have my own method which did some checking on the Number then passed to the virtual file provider is a different path
Hope this makes sense!
Decide which view to load, depending on input parameters is a controller task. You could write your own view engine.
But it is easier to return the full path to the view you want to return.
return View("~/myviews/ViewName3.aspx");
This will render ViewName3 from given directory.
You might want to look at decorating your controller method with Action Filter Attributes.
Then, you could do something special inside the Action Filter Attribute.
Or, you could pass Number to a Model object, then have the model Object return the right View path.
Either way, your instinct of trying to keep too much logic out of the Controller is sound, especially if [Number] is somehow a business concern and not a view concern.
You need to look into / google creating a custom view engine.
By the sounds of things you probably just want to extend the built-in WebFormViewEngine and just override the locations and the .FindView() method.
HTHs,
Charles
Sorry if this is a basic question - I'm having some trouble making the mental transition to ASP.NET MVC from the page framework.
In the page framework, I often use ASCX files to create small, encapsulated chunks of functionality which get inclded in various places throughout a site. If I'm building a page and I need one of these controls - I just add a reference and everything just works.
As far as I can tell, in MVC, the ASCX file is just a partial view. Does this mean that wherever I want to add one of these units of functionality I also have to add some code to the controller's action method to make sure the relevant ViewData is available to the ASCX?
If this is the case, it seems like a bit of a step backwards to me. It means, for example, that I couldn't just 'drop' a control into a master page without having to add code to every controller whose views use that master page!
I suspect I'm missing something - any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
- Chris
As far as I can tell, in MVC, the ASCX
file is just a partial view. Does this
mean that wherever I want to add one
of these units of functionality I also
have to add some code to the
controller's action method to make
sure the relevant ViewData is
available to the ASCX?
Yes.
However, you can use a RenderAction method in your view instead of RenderPartial, and all of your functionality (including the data being passed to the sub-view) will be encapsulated.
In other words, this will create a little package that incorporates a controller method, view data, and a partial view, which can be called with one line of code from within your main view.
Your question has been answered already, but just for sake of completeness, there's another option you might find attractive sometimes.
Have you seen how "controls" are masked on ASP.NET MVC? They are methods of the "HtmlHelper". If you want a textbox bound to "FirstName", for example, you can do:
<%= Html.Textbox("FirstName") %>
And you have things like that for many standard controls.
What you can do is create your own methods like that. To create your own method, you have to create an extension method on the HtmlHelper class, like this:
public static class HtmlHelperExtensions
{
public static string Bold(this HtmlHelper html, string text)
{
return "<b>" + text + "</b>\n";
}
}
Then in your view, after opening the namespace containing this class definition, you can use it like this:
<%= Html.Bold("This text will be in bold-face!") %>
Well, this is not particularly useful. But you can do very interesting things. One I use quite often is a method that takes an enumeration and created a Drop Down List with the values from this enumeration (ex: enum Gender { Male, Female }, and in the view something like Gender: <%= Html.EnumDropDown(Model.Gender) %>).
Good luck!
You can render a partial view and pass a model object to.
<% Html.RenderPartial("MyPartial", ViewData["SomeObject"]);
In your partial view (.ascx) file, you can then use the "Model" object (assuming you've inherited the proper object in your # Control deceleration) to do whatever you need to with that object.
You can, ofcourse, not pass and Model and just take the partial view's text and place it where you want it.
In your main view (.aspx file), you will need to define the proper object in the ViewData that you're passing to the partial view.
Another method you can do is use:
<% Html.RenderAction("MyAction", "MyController", new { Parameter1="Value1"}) %>
What the previous method does is call a controller Action, take its response, and place it where you called the "RenderAction()" method. Its the equivalent of running a request against a controller action and reading the response, except you place the response in another file.
Google "renderaction and renderpartial" for some more information.