Question

I am currently reading “Zend Framework 1.8
Web Application Development” written by “Keith Pope”. In that he tells us to use ‘ActionStack’ so that the Controller for the category top-level menu will be called on every request. The source code for the the plugin is :

class SF_Plugin_Action extends Zend_Controller_Plugin_Abstract 
{
    protected $_stack;

    public function dispatchLoopStartup(Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request) 
    {
      $stack = $this->getStack();

      // category menu
      $categoryRequest = new Zend_Controller_Request_Simple();
      $categoryRequest->setControllerName('category')
                      ->setActionName('index')
                      ->setParam(
                          'responseSegment', 
                          'categoryMain'
                      );

      // push requests into the stack
      $stack->pushStack($categoryRequest);
    }

    public function getStack()
    {
      if (null === $this->_stack) {
        $front = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();

        if (!$front->hasPlugin(
          'Zend_Controller_Plugin_ActionStack'
        )) {
           $stack = new Zend_Controller_Plugin_ActionStack();
           $front->registerPlugin($stack);
        } else {
           $stack = $front->getPlugin('ActionStack');
        }

        $this->_stack = $stack;
    }

    return $this->_stack;
  }
}

I have read the code for ‘ActionStack’ plugin. In the ‘postDispatch’ function it saves the current request and then in the ‘forward’ function it changes the current request’s controller, action and also set parameters. Then what will happen to the current request ? How it will be executed ?

Also I heard ActionStack is evil. As I am a newbie I didn’t understand most of it, as he did not explained it(for newbies). Why ActionStack is evil ?

Answer 1

It is the answer to my first question. As the action stack will be executed last (in the post dispatch) the current response object will be holding all content that got rendered for the request the user made, and the action stack will append the data to it. Hence the user will get content that he asked for + content that got rendered due to action stack