data validation and application architecture

[33degrees]

Interesting, have you had the need use this functionality?

The same result can be achieved by being more explicit in the url-generating calls, i.e. supplying null values for the parameters after the one that was changed, but having this functionality built in makes things a fair bit simpler. In the end though, I didn't even consider if I would need it when I implemented it; I just made a bunch of test cases based on the behavior of the rails route class and hacked away until it all worked.

[Ren]

After some sunday hacking, added named wildcard support, turned out fairly easy.

Also included a simple example dealing with dates.

        function testWildcardWithDefault()
        {
            $route = new Route('userblog', '*url/:username',
                    array('controller' => 'blog', 'action' => 'view', 'username' => 'george'));
            
            /*
                Due to the default username, the whole path is treated as part of the wildcard.
            */
            $url = new Url('some/long/url/george');
            $this->assertEqual($route->isMatch($url),
                                    array('controller' => 'blog', 'action' => 'view', 'username' => 'george',
                                                'url' => 'some/long/url/george'));
            
            $url = new Url('some/other/stuff/fred');
            $this->assertEqual($route->isMatch($url),
                                array('controller' => 'blog', 'action' => 'view', 'username' => 'george',
                                        'url' => 'some/other/stuff/fred'));    
        }
        
        function testWildcardWithoutDefault()
        {
            $route = new Route('userblog', '*url/:username',
                        array('controller' => 'blog', 'action' => 'view'));
            /*
                Because the username now doesn't have a default, it is always extracted from path.
            */
            $url = new Url('some/long/url/george');
            $this->assertEqual($route->isMatch($url),
                    array('controller' => 'blog', 'action' => 'view', 
                            'username' => 'george',
                            'url' => 'some/long/url'));

            $url = new Url('some/other/stuff/fred');
            $this->assertEqual($route->isMatch($url),
                                array('controller' => 'blog', 'action' => 'view', 'username' => 'fred',
                                        'url' => 'some/other/stuff'));    
        } 

http://routes.groovie.org/manual.html is pretty informative.

[Ezku]

After some sunday hacking, added named wildcard support, turned out fairly easy.

Also included a simple example dealing with dates.

Definitely interesting stuff. Thanks a lot. All hail Ren!

[Dr Livingston]

Well, not had a look at the ZIP yet, I hope to find some time this week, but I agree that this is very interesting, and hope to gleam something from it myself, now...

As for hailing Ren, I'm a God so I'm just as about the highest being that there is possible? Surely there can't be anyone who is above a God?

[Ezku]

As for hailing Ren, I'm a God so I'm just as about the highest being that there is possible? Surely there can't be anyone who is above a God?

Well, there's always the Composite design pattern.

[shea]

Umm,

hahaha!

[sweatje]

I'm a God

Who deified you?

[michel]

Who deified you?

SitePoint? If I'm not mistaken I noticed a deity of the programming kind posting here regularly

[thr]

Ren: Looked thru your code, nice work . About the whole route thing tho - great idea but won't it leave to kinda duplicated code? If I need to create an instance on every page I wanna generate an URL to the news archive and then call the kinda bulky route constructor with the correct params to get my route object/link/url - and how does the generated URLs look(Is some type of mod_rewrite required?) ?

[Ren]

Ren: Looked thru your code, nice work . About the whole route thing tho - great idea but won't it leave to kinda duplicated code? If I need to create an instance on every page I wanna generate an URL to the news archive and then call the kinda bulky route constructor with the correct params to get my route object/link/url - and how does the generated URLs look(Is some type of mod_rewrite required?) ?

mod_rewrite is preferred, the other method is to register the front controller page as a 404 error handler.

[thr]

ok, ah the 404-hack - if you rewrite the header sent it's perfectly viable tho :]. The code looks realy sleak, I'll give the route thingy a shot later tonight maybee and hack some myself - realy nice work tho

[michel]

the other method is to register the front controller page as a 404 error handler.

This will probably pollute your webserver's access logs...

Just had a look at your tests. What if you want to distinguish a wildcard from a static component? I can imagine routes with mixed dynamic and static components like /static/:dynamic:/another_static/:another_dynamic.

[thr]

This will probably pollute your webserver's access logs...

There are ways around it tho ;p start by sending the 200 header instead of 404 to the client so searchengines don't ignore you and the accesslog is possible to fix also (or just write your own accesslog)

[michel]

There are ways around it tho ;p start by sending the 200 header instead of 404 to the client so searchengines don't ignore you and the accesslog is possible to fix also (or just write your own accesslog)

Sure, but who would want to go through the extra trouble when there are dependable tools?

[thr]

Off Topic:

michel: All hosts don't give you the ability to install mod_rewrite, etc. - I just made a remark that it's possible to work around - now let's stay on topic as this is realy intereseting.

[Ren]

This will probably pollute your webserver's access logs...

Just had a look at your tests. What if you want to distinguish a wildcard from a static component? I can imagine routes with mixed dynamic and static components like /static/:dynamic:/another_static/:another_dynamic.

Well the 404 is there for when caching directly to the public web directory, would only get a 404 in the logs for cache misses. See livedocs.

function testTwoDynamicsSeperatedByStatic()
        {    
            $route = new Route('a', '/static/:dynamic/another_static/:another_dynamic');
            
            $url = new Url('/static/first_dynamic/another_static/second_dynamic');
                        
            $this->assertEqual($route->isMatch($url), array('dynamic' => 'first_dynamic',
                                                                'another_dynamic' => 'second_dynamic'));
        } 

Works.

[michel]

   function testTwoDynamicsSeperatedByStatic()
           {    
               $route = new Route('a', '/static/:dynamic/another_static/:another_dynamic');
               
               $url = new Url('/static/first_dynamic/another_static/second_dynamic');
                           
               $this->assertEqual($route->isMatch($url), array('dynamic' => 'first_dynamic',
                                                                   'another_dynamic' => 'second_dynamic'));
           } 

Works.

Cool. I was wondering about url creation, but this passes as well:

    function testUrlCreationWithMixedDynamicsAndStatics()
    {
        $route = new Route('test', '/static/:dynamic/another_static/:another_dynamic');
        $url = $route->createUrl(array('dynamic' => 'one', 'another_dynamic' => 'two'));
        $this->assertEqual('/static/one/another_static/two', $url->toString());
    } 

Off Topic:

michel: All hosts don't give you the ability to install mod_rewrite, etc. - I just made a remark that it's possible to work around - now let's stay on topic as this is realy intereseting.

Aye, aye, sir Nevertheless an important aspect to consider when choosing a technique.

[Ren]

Cool. I was wondering about url creation, but this passes as well:
[php]
function testUrlCreationWithMixedDynamicsAndStatics()
{
$route = new Route('test', '/static/:dynamic/another_static/:another_dynamic');
$url = $route->createUrl(array('dynamic' => 'one', 'another_dynamic' => 'two'));
$this->assertEqual('/static/one/another_static/two', $url->toString());
}

Yeha, the preg_split in getParts() creates an array that looks like

(
0 => '/static'
1 => ':'
2 => 'dynamic'
3 => '/another_static/'
4 => ':'
5 => 'another_dynamic'
6 => ''
)

Which is a repeating pattern, static bit, type of match (dynamic (:) or wildcard (*) ), and the name of wildcard/dynamic. Just matter of pieceing it back together replacing the type&name with something else.

[Ren]

Going back to the topic; in rails, on top of the validation done to urls (which prevents the controller from trying to work with invalid data), the business logic validation is done in the models. You can set up a bunch of rules to validate against when you insert a record, update a record, or both; If the validation fails, the save() call returns false, and you can query the Errors object of the model to find out what went wrong. I've yet to come across a situation where this wasn't enough.

Just started reading Rails source, and the ActiveRecord validation is kind of interesting, thou it does seem abit odd in places. Namely the confirmation (entering email twice), as that validation is done inside AR, which seems a slight abuse on the pattern.

[sweatje]

Just started reading Rails source, and the ActiveRecord validation is kind of interesting, thou it does seem abit odd in places. Namely the confirmation (entering email twice), as that validation is done inside AR, which seems a slight abuse on the pattern.

I guess technically the validation is done as part of the Model, which extends the ActiveRecord pattern for persistance. From that perspective, it makes more sense why it is included there.

[Ren]

I guess technically the validation is done as part of the Model, which extends the ActiveRecord pattern for persistance. From that perspective, it makes more sense why it is included there.

Aye, its just they treat the 2nd copy of the email/password as a virtual column on the AR object.

# The person has to already have a password attribute (a column in the people table), but the password_confirmation is virtual.
# It exists only as an in-memory variable for validating the password. This check is performed only if password_confirmation
# is not nil and by default on save.

from rails\vendor\rails\activerecord\lib\active_record\validations.rb