Question

I’m working with a PHP MVC Framework. Works really well. I like the separation of the business layer (model) with the business logic (controller). But i just stumbled upon a problem. Here’s the thing:

Suppose i navigate to the following url:
http://localhost/user/showall/

In this case the userController.php is called and within that file there is a method showallAction() which gets executed.

In the showallAction() method i simply do a request to a model which gets all the users for me. Something like this:

public function showallAction()
{
    // create userModel object
    $users = new userModel();

    // get all users and assign the data to a variable which can be accessed in the view
    $this->view->users = $users->getAllUsers();

    // render views
    $this->view->render();
}

So this method gets all the users, assigns the data returned from the userModel to a variable and i can easily work with the returned data in my view. Just a typical MVC thing.

Now here comes the problem.
I also need to create a native iphone variant. Ofcourse the looks will be totally different. So all i actually want to do is to request this url:

http://localhost/user/showall/

And that it just gives me the array (in json format) back. So i can use that for the mobile development.

But this obviously can’t be done right now because the showallAction() method assumes that it is for web browser display. It doesn’t echo JSON formatted, instead it simply assings the array of users to a variable.

So that means i have to create another method “showallMobileAction()” in order to get the data, but specifically for the mobile device. But this is not an elegant solution. I’m sure that are better ways…

Anyone any idea how can i solve this problem??

Answer 1

In your situation i would modify the routing mechanism.

It would be useful, if you could add extension at the end of URL, which represents the format you expect, like :

http://foo.bar/news/latest       >> HTML document
http://foo.bar/news/latest.html  >> HTML document
http://foo.bar/news/latest.rss   >> you RSS feed
http://foo.bar/news/latest.json  >> data in JSON format 

It’s a simple pattern to recognize. And you can later expand this to add .. dunno .. pdf output, or Atom feeds.

Additionally , two comments :

1. Model is not a type of objects. Instead it is a layer, containing objects responsible for business logic, and objects responsible for data storage/retrieval.

2. View should be a full blown object, to which you bind the domain objects (objects responsible for business logic).