From a08d8a245b321fe077a62993326c3830ed6736f5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Alexander Makarov <sam@rmcreative.ru>
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2013 02:00:12 +0400
Subject: [PATCH] started controller docs

---
 docs/guide/controller.md | 188 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 188 insertions(+)

diff --git a/docs/guide/controller.md b/docs/guide/controller.md
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+Controller
+==========
+
+Controller is one of the key parts of the application. It determines how to handle incoming request and creates a response.
+
+Most often a controller takes HTTP request data and returns HTML, JSON or XML as a response.
+
+Basics
+------
+
+Controller resides in application's `controllers` directory is is named like `SiteController.php` where `Site`
+part could be anything describing a set of actions it contains.
+
+The basic web controller is a class that extends [[\yii\web\Controller]] and could be very simple:
+
+```php
+namespace app\controllers;
+
+use yii\web\Controller;
+
+class SiteController extends Controller
+{
+	public function actionIndex()
+	{
+		// will render view from "views/site/index.php"
+		return $this->render('index');
+	}
+
+	public function actionTest()
+	{
+		// will just print "test" to the browser
+		return 'test';
+	}
+}
+```
+
+As you can see, typical controller contains actions that are public class methods named as `actionSomething`.
+
+Routes
+------
+
+Each controller action has a corresponding internal route. In our example above `actionIndex` has `site/index` route
+and `actionTest` has `site/test` route. In this route `site` is referred to as controller ID while `test` is referred to
+as action ID.
+
+By default you can access specific controller and action using the `http://example.com/?r=controller/action` URL. This
+behavior is fully customizable. For details refer to [URL Management](url.md).
+
+If controller is located inside a module its action internal route will be `module/controller/action`.
+
+In case module, controller or action specified isn't found Yii will return "not found" page and HTTP status code 404.
+
+### Defaults
+
+If user isn't specifying any route i.e. using URL like `http://example.com/`, Yii assumes that default route should be
+used. It is determined by [[\yii\web\Application::defaultRoute]] method and is `site` by default meaning that `SiteController`
+will be loaded.
+
+A controller has a default action. When the user request does not specify which action to execute by usign an URL such as
+`http://example.com/?r=site`, the default action will be executed. By default, the default action is named as `index`.
+It can be changed by setting the [[\yii\base\Controller::defaultAction]] property.
+
+Action parameters
+-----------------
+
+It was already mentioned that a simple action is just a public method named as `actionSomething`. Now we'll review
+ways that an action can get parameters from HTTP.
+
+### Action parameters
+
+You can define named arguments for an action and these will be automatically populated from corresponding values from
+`$_GET`. This is very convenient both because of the short syntax and an ability to specify defaults:
+
+```php
+namespace app\controllers;
+
+use yii\web\Controller;
+
+class BlogController extends Controller
+{
+	public function actionView($id, $version = null)
+	{
+		$post = Post::find($id);
+		$text = $post->text;
+
+		if($version) {
+			$text = $post->getHistory($version);
+		}
+
+		return $this->render('view', array(
+			'post' => $post,
+			'text' => $text,
+		));
+	}
+}
+```
+
+The action above can be accessed using either `http://example.com/?r=blog/view&id=42` or
+`http://example.com/?r=blog/view&id=42&version=3`. In the first case `version` isn't specified and default parameter
+value is used instead.
+
+### Getting data from request
+
+If your action is working with data from HTTP POST or has too many GET parameters you can rely on request object that
+is accessible via `\Yii::$app->request`:
+
+```php
+namespace app\controllers;
+
+use yii\web\Controller;
+use yii\web\HttpException;
+
+class BlogController extends Controller
+{
+	public function actionUpdate($id)
+	{
+		$post = Post::find($id);
+		if(!$post) {
+			throw new HttpException(404);
+		}
+
+		$data = \Yii::$app->request->getPost('Post');
+		if($data) {
+			$post->populate($data);
+			if($post->save()) {
+				$this->redirect(array('view', 'id' => $post->id));
+			}
+		}
+
+		return $this->render('update', array(
+			'post' => $post,
+		));
+	}
+}
+```
+
+Standalone actions
+------------------
+
+If action is generic enough it makes sense to implement it in a separate class to be able to reuse it.
+Create `actions/Page.php`
+
+```php
+namespace \app\actions;
+
+class Page extends \yii\base\Action
+{
+	public $view = 'index';
+
+	public function run()
+	{
+		$this->controller->render($view);
+	}
+}
+```
+
+The following code is too simple to implement as a separate action but gives an idea of how it works. Action implemented
+can be used in your controller as following:
+
+```php
+public SiteController extends \yii\web\Controller
+{
+	public function actions()
+	{
+		return array(
+			'about' => array(
+				'class' => '@app/actions/Page',
+					'view' => 'about',
+				),
+			),
+		);
+	}
+}
+```
+
+After doing so you can access your action as `http://example.com/?r=site/about`.
+
+Filters
+-------
+
+Catching all incoming requests
+------------------------------
+
+
+See also
+--------
+
+- [Console](console.md)
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