The Request Handler Component¶
The Request Handler component is used in Cake to determine information about the incoming HTTP request. You can use it to better inform your controller about AJAX requests, get information about the remote client’s IP address and request type, or strip unwanted data from output. To use the Request Handler component, you’ll need to make sure it is specified in your controller’s $components array:
<?php
class ThingsController extends AppController
{
var $components = array('RequestHandler');
// ...
}
Getting Client/Request Information¶
Let’s just dive in:
accepts
string $type
Returns information about the content-types that the client accepts, depending on the value of $type. If null or no value is passed, it will return an array of content-types the client accepts. If a string is passed, it returns true if the client accepts the given type, by checking $type against the content-type map (see setContent()). If $type is an array, each string is evaluated individually, and accepts() will return true if just one of them matches an accepted content-type. For example:
<?php
class PostsController extends AppController
{
var $components = array('RequestHandler');
function beforeFilter ()
{
if ($this->RequestHandler->accepts('html'))
{
// Execute code only if client accepts an HTML (text/html) response
}
elseif ($this->RequestHandler->accepts('rss'))
{
// Execute RSS-only code
}
elseif ($this->RequestHandler->accepts('atom'))
{
// Execute Atom-only code
}
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
}
}
}
getAjaxVersion
If you are using the Prototype JS libraries, you can fetch a special header it sets on AJAX requests. This function returns the Prototype version used.
getClientIP
Returns the remote client’s IP address.
getReferrer
Returns the server name from which the request originated.
isAjax
Returns true if the current request was an XMLHttpRequest.
isAtom
Returns true if the client accepts Atom feed content (application/atom+xml).
isDelete
Returns true if the current request was via DELETE.
isGet
Returns true if the current request was via GET.
isMobile
Returns true if the user agent string matches a mobile web browser.
isPost
Returns true if the current request was via POST.
isPut
Returns true if the current request was via PUT.
isRss
Returns true if the clients accepts RSS feed content (application/rss+xml).
isXml
Returns true if the client accepts XML content (application/xml or text/xml).
setContent
string $name
string $type
Adds a content-type alias mapping, for use with accepts() and prefers(), where $name is the name of the mapping (string), and $type is either a string or an array of strings, each of which is a MIME type. The built-in type mappings are as follows:
// Name => Type
'js' => 'text/javascript',
'css' => 'text/css',
'html' => 'text/html',
'form' => 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'file' => 'multipart/form-data',
'xhtml' => array('application/xhtml+xml', 'application/xhtml', 'text/xhtml'),
'xml' => array('application/xml', 'text/xml'),
'rss' => 'application/rss+xml',
'atom' => 'application/atom+xml'
Stripping Data¶
Occasionally you will want to remove data from a request or output. Use the following Request Handler functions to perform these sorts of operations.
stripAll
string $str
Strips the white space, images, and scripts from $str (using stripWhitespace(), stripImages(), and stripScripts()).
stripImages
string $str
Strips any HTML embedded images from $str.
stripScripts
string $str
Strips any <script> and <style> related tags from $str.
stripTags
string $str
string $tag1
string $tag2…
Removes the tags specified by $tag1, $tag2, etc. from $str:
<?php
$someString = '<font color="#FF0000"><bold>Foo</bold></font> <em>Bar</em>';
echo $this->RequestHandler->stripTags($someString, 'font', 'bold');
// output: Foo <em>Bar</em>
stripWhiteSpace
string $str
Strips whitespace from $str.
Other Useful Functions¶
The Request Handler component is especially useful when your application includes AJAX requests. The setAjax() function is used to automatically detect AJAX requests, and set the controller’s layout to an AJAX layout for that request. The benefit here is that you can make small modular views that can also double as AJAX views:
// list.thtml
<ul>
<?php foreach ($things as $thing):?>
<li><?php echo $thing;?></li>
<?endforeach;?>
</ul>
//-------------------------------------------------------------
//The list action of my ThingsController:
function list()
{
$this->RequestHandler->setAjax($this);
$this->set('things', $this->Thing->findAll());
}
When a normal browser request is made to /things/list, the unordered list is rendered inside of the default layout for the application. If the URL is requested as part of an AJAX operation, the list is automatically rendered in the bare AJAX layout.