Request Handling¶

Obtaining Request Information¶

Request Handler has several methods that provide information about the client and its request.

RequestHandlerComponent::accepts($type = null)¶

$type can be a string, or an array, or null. If a string, accepts will return true if the client accepts the content type. If an array is specified, accepts return true if any one of the content types is accepted by the client. If null returns an array of the content-types that the client accepts. For example:

class PostsController extends AppController {

    public $components = array('RequestHandler');

    public function beforeFilter() {
        if ($this->RequestHandler->accepts('html')) {
            // Execute code only if client accepts an HTML (text/html)
            // response
        } elseif ($this->RequestHandler->accepts('xml')) {
            // Execute XML-only code
        }
        if ($this->RequestHandler->accepts(array('xml', 'rss', 'atom'))) {
            // Executes if the client accepts any of the above: XML, RSS
            // or Atom
        }
    }
}

Other request ‘type’ detection methods include:

RequestHandlerComponent::isXml()¶

Returns true if the current request accepts XML as a response.

RequestHandlerComponent::isRss()¶

Returns true if the current request accepts RSS as a response.

RequestHandlerComponent::isAtom()¶

Returns true if the current call accepts an Atom response, false otherwise.

RequestHandlerComponent::isMobile()¶

Returns true if user agent string matches a mobile web browser, or if the client accepts WAP content. The supported Mobile User Agent strings are:

• Android

• AvantGo

• BlackBerry

• DoCoMo

• Fennec

• iPad

• iPhone

• iPod

• J2ME

• MIDP

• NetFront

• Nokia

• Opera Mini

• Opera Mobi

• PalmOS

• PalmSource

• portalmmm

• Plucker

• ReqwirelessWeb

• SonyEricsson

• Symbian

• UP.Browser

• webOS

• Windows CE

• Windows Phone OS

• Xiino

RequestHandlerComponent::isWap()¶

Returns true if the client accepts WAP content.

All of the above request detection methods can be used in a similar fashion to filter functionality intended for specific content types. For example when responding to AJAX requests, you often will want to disable browser caching, and change the debug level. However, you want to allow caching for non-AJAX requests. The following would accomplish that:

if ($this->request->is('ajax')) {
    $this->disableCache();
}
// Continue Controller action

Obtaining Additional Client Information¶

RequestHandlerComponent::getAjaxVersion()¶

Gets Prototype version if call is AJAX, otherwise empty string. The Prototype library sets a special “Prototype version” HTTP header.

Automatically decoding request data¶

RequestHandlerComponent::addInputType($type, $handler)¶

Parameters:

• $type (string) – The content type alias this attached decoder is for. e.g. ‘json’ or ‘xml’

• $handler (array) – The handler information for the type.

Add a request data decoder. The handler should contain a callback, and any additional arguments for the callback. The callback should return an array of data contained in the request input. For example adding a CSV handler in your controllers’ beforeFilter could look like:

$parser = function ($data) {
    $rows = str_getcsv($data, "\n");
    foreach ($rows as &$row) {
        $row = str_getcsv($row, ',');
    }
    return $rows;
};
$this->RequestHandler->addInputType('csv', array($parser));

The above example requires PHP 5.3, however you can use any callable for the handling function. You can also pass additional arguments to the callback, this is useful for callbacks like json_decode:

$this->RequestHandler->addInputType('json', array('json_decode', true));

The above will make $this->request->data an array of the JSON input data, without the additional true you’d get a set of stdClass objects.

Responding To Requests¶

In addition to request detection RequestHandler also provides easy access to altering the output and content type mappings for your application.

RequestHandlerComponent::setContent($name, $type = null)¶

Parameters:

• $name (string) – The name or file extension of the Content-type ie. html, css, json, xml.

• $type (mixed) – The mime-type(s) that the Content-type maps to.

setContent adds/sets the Content-types for the given name. Allows content-types to be mapped to friendly aliases and or extensions. This allows RequestHandler to automatically respond to requests of each type in its startup method. If you are using Router::parseExtension, you should use the file extension as the name of the Content-type. Furthermore, these content types are used by prefers() and accepts().

setContent is best used in the beforeFilter() of your controllers, as this will best leverage the automagicness of content-type aliases.

The default mappings are:

• javascript text/javascript

• js text/javascript

• json application/json

• css text/css

• html text/html, */*

• text text/plain

• txt text/plain

• csv application/vnd.ms-excel, text/plain

• form application/x-www-form-urlencoded

• file multipart/form-data

• xhtml application/xhtml+xml, application/xhtml, text/xhtml

• xhtml-mobile application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml

• xml application/xml, text/xml

• rss application/rss+xml

• atom application/atom+xml

• amf application/x-amf

• wap text/vnd.wap.wml, text/vnd.wap.wmlscript, image/vnd.wap.wbmp

• wml text/vnd.wap.wml

• wmlscript text/vnd.wap.wmlscript

• wbmp image/vnd.wap.wbmp

• pdf application/pdf

• zip application/x-zip

• tar application/x-tar

RequestHandlerComponent::prefers($type = null)¶

Determines which content-types the client prefers. If no parameter is given the most likely content type is returned. If $type is an array the first type the client accepts will be returned. Preference is determined primarily by the file extension parsed by Router if one has been provided, and secondly by the list of content-types in HTTP_ACCEPT.

RequestHandlerComponent::renderAs($controller, $type)¶

Parameters:

• $controller (Controller) – Controller Reference

• $type (string) – friendly content type name to render content for ex. xml, rss.

Change the render mode of a controller to the specified type. Will also append the appropriate helper to the controller’s helper array if available and not already in the array.

RequestHandlerComponent::respondAs($type, $options)¶

Parameters:

• $type (string) – Friendly content type name ex. xml, rss or a full content type like application/x-shockwave

• $options (array) – If $type is a friendly type name that has more than one content association, $index is used to select the content type.

Sets the response header based on content-type map names.

RequestHandlerComponent::responseType()¶

Returns the current response type Content-type header or null if one has yet to be set.

Taking advantage of HTTP cache validation¶

The HTTP cache validation model is one of the processes used for cache gateways, also known as reverse proxies, to determine if they can serve a stored copy of a response to the client. Under this model, you mostly save bandwidth, but when used correctly you can also save some CPU processing, reducing this way response times.

Enabling the RequestHandlerComponent in your controller automatically activates a check done before rendering the view. This check compares the response object against the original request to determine whether the response was not modified since the last time the client asked for it.

If response is evaluated as not modified, then the view rendering process is stopped, saving processing time, saving bandwidth and no content is returned to the client. The response status code is then set to 304 Not Modified.

You can opt-out this automatic checking by setting the checkHttpCache setting to false:

public $components = array(
    'RequestHandler' => array(
        'checkHttpCache' => false
));

Using custom ViewClasses¶

When using JsonView/XmlView you might want to override the default serialization with a custom View class, or add View classes for other types.

You can map existing and new types to your custom classes.

RequestHandlerComponent::viewClassMap($type, $viewClass)¶

Parameters:

• $type (string|array) – The type string or map array with format array('json' => 'MyJson')

• $viewClass (string) – The viewClass to be used for the type without View appended

You can also set this automatically by using the viewClassMap setting:

public $components = array(
    'RequestHandler' => array(
        'viewClassMap' => array(
            'json' => 'ApiKit.MyJson',
            'xml' => 'ApiKit.MyXml',
            'csv' => 'ApiKit.Csv'
        )
));