Chapter: jUrl: automatic urls
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Jelix has a mechanism allowing to avoid putting url concerning actions directly in the templates (or anywhere). For this, simply indicate the module, the action, the type of request and some other parameters if you need and jUrl handles the generation of the corresponding url. On the other hand, when a request occurs, jUrl analyzes the url to then deduce the module, the action, and the parameters, and this, whatever the type of request is. Mod_rewrite from apache is then not useful.
For this, jUrl relies on an url engine. Three are featured with Jelix :
- a "simple" url engine, which is deprecated since Jelix 1.4.
- a "basic_significant" url engine (the default one)
- a "significant" url engine
You can even create your own url engine since a url engin is nothing more than a plugin.
A recall on urls ¶
An url is made of different parts :
http://mysite.com/a/path/entrypoint.php/path/info?param1=value1
a/path/entrypoint- corresponds to the path of the entry point,
/indexfor example .php- the extension of the entry point. It is optional if multiview is activated in apache.
/path/info- the pathinfo, complementary part to the path, not corresponding to a path on the disk
?param1=value1- the parameters.
The url engines analyze the pathinfo and the parameters to determine the module/action.
You can have to configure some options in Apache. See apache configuration.
Configuration ¶
The configuration of jUrl is made in the urlengine section of the configuration file. Here are its parameters :
engine- Indicates the type of engine to use. The three available values are
simple,basic_significantandsignificant. enableParser- Activates the url analyzing by the url engine. If you prefer to use mod_rewrite of apache, you can then specify off.
multiview- Indicates if the multiview is activated or not in apache. this specifies then to the url engine not to generate the extension of the entry points (.php) in the moment of the creation of urls. Thus, we have "cleaner" urls.
basePath- Path to the www directory, or more exactly, the common part of the paths of all the entry points.
Thus, if you access
index.phpwith the urlhttp://localhost/jelix/myapp/www/index.php, you specify:
basePath= /jelix/myapp/www/
On the other hand, if you have specified the documentRoot in apache, pointing on
jelix/myapp/www, you will then specify:
basePath= /
Be careful, the basePath value must always begin with a /. If you leave
basePath empty, Jelix will try to guess its value.
defaultEntrypoint- Default entry point of the application.
indexby default. You must not indicate the suffix (.php). entrypointExtension- Extension of the entry points. It's
.phpby default, but it may be.php5. notfoundAct- The action to do when a url do not correspond to anything.
Indicate it under the form of a selector :
module~actionThis action should display an error message, and return a 404 http code. Carefull: for development, activate logging of errors in files, it allows you to know if this "404" page is displayed because of an error or not.
Configuration of URL engines ¶
Jelix comes bundled with three URL engines :
- the "simple" engine, the fastest of all. However, the urls are ugly as the query string is used. This engine is deprecated and you shouldn't used it
- the "basic_significant" engine. It is faster than the "significant" engine but slower than the "simple" one. The urls are prettier than with the simple engine but not as pretty as with the significant engine.
- the "significant" engine, is slightly slower than the others. However, it enable the use of custom urls and enables the hiding of the entrypoint (index.php).
Each engine as its own configuration documentation:
Using jUrl ¶
Whatever you want to do, you must avoid to put urls in your code, in your modules. Otherwise, this would create some dependencies, and the portability would be decreased. It is then impossible to use the module for several applications at the same time because urls can be different according to the configuration of the applications. And if the module is reused anywhere else, you would have to modify the templates etc.
The urls must be built by Jelix. For this, you have two available tools.
jUrl::get ¶
The jUrl object has a static method, get(), which, according to an action and other parameters, returns the corresponding url for the current application :
$string_url = jUrl::get("news~view@classic", array("id_news"=>"54"));
The first parameter of the function is an action selector. Here, we ask the url
corresponding to the view action of the news module, for the classic type of
request with an id_news parameter. With the simple url engine, the corresponding
url will probably be index.php?module=news&action=view&id_news=54.
If the significant url engine is used, this can be anything else, according to what is configured in the urls.xml file.
jUrl template plugin ¶
In the templates, you can use the jUrl plugin. The syntax is the same as
jUrl::get(). Example:
<p><a href="{jurl 'news~view@classic', array('id_news'=>'54')}">Details of the news</a></p>
The result with the simple url engine will then be:
<p><a href="index.php?module=news&action=view&id_news=54">Details of the news</a></p>
You can use {jfullurl} instead of {jurl} to have a full url with the
domain name (useful for example into a template for an email).
