Custom Route Collector

In more complex setups, it can be desirable to move the route definitions from web/index.php to a dedicated file. This is done in Nice by implementing a custom RouteCollector, and registering it with the dependency injection container.

Note: This guide builds on the Compiler Passes walk-through.

---

Warning: A RouteCollector that maps any Closures as handlers cannot, at present, be cached. Use class-based controller handlers to allow file-based caching of routing data.

Getting started

To start out, create a new file called RouteCollector.php within your project's Router namespace. Continuing the Acme example:

<?php

namespace Acme\Router;

use Nice\Router\RouteCollector as BaseCollector;

class RouteCollector extends BaseCollector
{
    /**
     * Map all routes
     */
    protected function collectRoutes()
    {
        $this->map('/', 'home', 'Acme\Controller\DefaultController::indexAction');
        $this->map('/login', 'login', 'Acme\Controller\DefaultController::loginAction');
    }
}

Tip: The above example specifies class-based controllers instead of the usual Closure actions.

Overriding the default collector

A few boilerplate steps need to occur to complete our goal. We must override the default router.collector service with our new implementation. We'll do this by creating a custom dependency injection CompilerPass.

<?php

namespace Acme\DependencyInjection\Compiler;

use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Compiler\CompilerPassInterface;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerBuilder;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Reference;

class OverrideRouteCollectorPass implements CompilerPassInterface
{
    public function process(ContainerBuilder $container)
    {
        $container->getDefinition('router.collector')
            ->setClass('Acme\Router\RouteCollector')
            ->setArguments(array(
                new Reference('router.parser'),
                new Reference('router.data_generator')
            ));
    }
}

Finally, add your new compiler pass in your front controller:

<?php

use Nice\Application;
use Acme\DependencyInjection\Compiler\OverrideRouteCollectorPass;

// ...

$app = new Application();
$app->addCompilerPass(new OverrideRouteCollectorPass());

$app->run();