Validating domain objects¶
After the first introduction to Extbase and Fluid in some detail there has been very little time for discussing the domain and how to go about ensuring its consistency. People often assume that domain objects are consistent and adhere to some rules at all times. Unfortunately, this is not achieved automatically. So it is important to define these rules explicitly. In the blog example the following rules can be created:
- The fields
usernameandpasswordof the user object must have at least five characters. Furthermore, theusernamemust not contain special characters. - The field
emailof the user object must contain a valid email address.
These rules must apply at all times for the user object. A user object is only valid if it complies with these validation rules. These rules are called invariants, because they must be valid during the entire lifetime of the object.
At the beginning of your project, it is important to consider which invariants your domain objects will consist of. Extbase provides validator PHP classes for checking of the invariants.
The following example shows this. The framework gives the user the ability to correct an error, when it occurs.
Validators for checking of invariants¶
A validator is a PHP class that has to check a certain invariant. All
validators that are used in Extbase extensions have to implement the interface
ValidatorInterface. In most use cases it is recommended to extend the
TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Validation\Validator\AbstractValidator, overriding
the abstract method isValid().
The method isValid() does not return a value but adds an error to the
TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Error\Result in case the validation fails.
There are 2 types of validation checks: #. A loose check is making only a relaxed check over a very large range of possible values. #. A tight check requires the exact fitting of the value.
If you want to implement a loose form value validation,
then validator options might come in handy. Extbase ships with a StringLength
validator, which offers the options minimum and maximum, that
let you define the string length the validator should use to check against the incoming
value.
For example, a validator that checks whether the passed string is a valid email address, looks like this:
use TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Validation\Validator\AbstractValidator;
final class MyValidator extends AbstractValidator
{
public function isValid(mixed $value): void
{
if (!is_string($value) || !$this->validEmail($value)) {
$this->addError(
$this->translateErrorMessage(
'validator.emailaddress.notvalid',
'extbase'
), 1221559976);
}
}
private function validEmail($emailAddress)
{
return \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility::validEmail($emailAddress);
}
}
If $value is neither a string nor a valid email address, the validator
adds an error by calling $this->addError().
Tip
The method addError() expects an error message and an
error code. The latter should be unique; therefore, we recommend using
the UNIX timestamp of the source code’s creation time. With the
help of the error code, the error can be definitely identified, for
example, in bug reports.
By default, Extbase will not call a validator if the value to validate is
empty. This is configured through the property $acceptsEmptyValues, which is
set to true by default.
In the package
\TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Validation\Validator\* Extbase offers
many validators for default requirements like the validation of emails,
numbers and strings.
When does validation take place?¶
Domain objects in Extbase are validated only at one point in time: When they get inserted into a controller action. Figure 9-1 shows what happens before the action is called.
Figure 9-1: Data flow of a request before the action is called
When a user sends a request, Extbase first determines which action within the controller is responsible for this request. As Extbase knows the names and types of the action’s arguments, it can create objects from the incoming data. This operation will be described in detail in the section “Argument mapping” later on. Now the main step is as follows: The created objects are to be validated. That is, the invariants must be checked. If all arguments are successfully validated, the extension’s requested action is called, and it can continue processing the given objects.
Tip
Certainly, it would be helpful if the validation was also done during the persisting of the objects to the database. At the moment, it is not done, since the data is stored in the database after sending the answer back to the browser. Therefore the user could not be informed in case of validating errors. In the meantime, a second validating when persisting the objects is built into FLOW. So this is expected in Extbase in the medium term.
When an error occurs during the validation, then the method
errorAction() of the current controller is
called. The default errorAction(), when possible, redirects the user
to the last used form, in order to give them a chance to
correct the entries.
Tip
How the errorAction() knows
which form was the last displayed one? This information is created by
the form ViewHelper. It automatically adds the property
__referrer to every generated form, which contains
information about the current extension, controller, model and action
combination. This data can be used by the
errorAction() to display the erroneous form
again.
Registering validators¶
The last chapter shows how validators are working and when they are called. However the domain model must be connected with its validators. It must be defined which part of the model has to be checked by which validator. Therefore there are three possibilities:
- validating in the domain model with annotations
- validating in the domain model with user defined validator class
- validating of controller arguments
Validating in the domain model with annotations¶
In most cases, it is sufficient to validate the properties of a domain object separately. When all properties are validated with success, the complete domain object is also successfully validated. When a property can not be validated, the overall validation of the domain object fails.
To define how a property of a domain object should be validated,
there is a mark annotations inside the source code.
Annotations are machine-readable “annotations” marks in the source code that
are placed in comment blocks and start with the character
@.
For the validation, the @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate annotation is
available. With this it can be specified, which validator has to be used for
checking the annotated property. Take a look at this part
of the domain model Post inside of the blog example:
<?php
namespace MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Model;
class Post extends \TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\DomainObject\AbstractEntity
{
/**
* @var string
* @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate("StringLength", options={"minimum": 3, "maximum": 50})
*/
protected $title;
/**
* @var string
*/
protected $content;
}
With the line @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate("StringLength", options={"minimum": 3, "maximum": 50})
the validator for the property $title is
specified. In parenthesis, the parameters for the validator are also specified.
It is made sure that a title of a blog post is never shorter
than three characters, and that it will never be longer than 50 characters.
Which validator class has to be used? Extbase looks for a validator
class using
\TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Validation\Validator\*ValidatorName*Validator.
Using the above given annotation @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate("StringLength") the
validator
\TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Validation\Validator\StringLengthValidator
is used.
When you have created your own validator to check the invariants
you can use it in the @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate annotation using the full
class name.
Example:
<?php
namespace MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Model;
class Post extends \TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\DomainObject\AbstractEntity
{
/**
* @var string
* @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate("MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Validator\TitleValidator")
*/
protected $title;
/**
* @var string
*/
protected $content;
}
Here the property $title is validated with the
\MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Validator\TitleValidator.
This validator class can now check any invariants. For example, the
validator shown in the following listing checks whether the title of a
blog post is always built using the convention Maintopic: Title:
<?php
namespace MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Validator;
use TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Validation\Validator\AbstractValidator;
class TitleValidator extends AbstractValidator
{
protected function isValid($value)
{
// $value is the title string
if (count(explode(':', $value)) >= 2) {
return;
}
$this->addError('The title was not of the type [Topic]:[Title].', 1221563773);
}
}
By this method particular properties of the domain model are validated. The next section is about complex domain objects.
Domain model with user defined validator class¶
The ability to register validators in the
model is handy when the model’s individual properties
need to be validated. However, sometimes it is necessary to validate the
relationship between two or more properties of a model class. For
example, for a user registration, it is reasonable that in the user object,
the properties $password and $passwordConfirmed
exist and must be identical. Therefore the individual validators
for $password respectively
$passwordConfirmation can not help because they have no
access to each other. You need an option to validate a domain object
as a whole.
For this, you can create your own validator class for every object in the domain model, which validates the object as a whole and with it has access to all object properties where possible.
Equipped with this knowledge, a
UserValidator can be implemented, which compares $password with
$passwordConfirmation. At first it must be checked, if the given
object is of the type user - after all, the validator can be
called with any object and has to add an error in such
case.
<?php
namespace MyVendor\ExtbaseExample\Domain\Validator;
class UserValidator extends \TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Validation\Validator\AbstractValidator
{
protected function isValid($user)
{
if (! $user instanceof \MyVendor\ExtbaseExample\Domain\Model\User) {
$this->addError('The given object is not a User.', 1262341470);
}
}
}
If $user is not an instance of the user object, an
error message is directly created with addError(). The
validator does not validate the object any further.
Tip
The method addError() gets two parameters - the
first is an error message string, while the second is an error number.
The Extbase developers always use the current UNIX timestamp of the source code’s creation time
when calling addError(). By this, it is secured that any
validation errors can be uniquely identified.
Now the foundation of the validator is created. Here comes the proper implementation of it - the check for equality between the passwords. This is made quickly.
<?php
namespace MyVendor\ExtbaseExample\Domain\Validator;
class UserValidator extends \TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Validation\Validator\AbstractValidator
{
protected function isValid($user)
{
if (! $user instanceof \MyVendor\ExtbaseExample\Domain\Model\User) {
$this->addError('The given object is not a User.', 1262341470);
return;
}
if ($user->getPassword() !== $user->getPasswordConfirmation()) {
$this->addError('The passwords do not match.', 1262341707);
}
}
}
Because the complete object is accessed, the checking
for equality of $password and
$passwordConfirmation is very straightforward.
Use the newly created validator by annotating the corresponding controller, for example:
<?php
declare(strict_types=1);
namespace MyVendor\ExtbaseExample\Controller;
use MyVendor\ExtbaseExample\Domain\Model\User;
use Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface;
use TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation as Extbase;
use TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Mvc\Controller\ActionController;
class UserController extends ActionController
{
/**
* @Extbase\Validate(param="user", validator="MyVendor\ExtbaseExample\Domain\Validator\UserValidator")
*/
public function showAction(User $user): ResponseInterface
{
// ...
}
}
Now there are two possibilities how validators can be registered for domain objects:
- directly in the model via
@TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validateannotation for single properties - with an own validator class for complete domain objects.
Important
Up until version 10, Extbase “magically” applied validators based on a naming convention. Starting with TYPO3 v10, all validators need to be explicitly registered.
The illustrated validators until now are always executed when a domain model is given as a parameter to a controller action - that is, for all actions. Sometimes it is desired to initiate the validation only when calling special actions. How this can be done, is shown in the next section.
Validation of controller arguments¶
If you want to validate a domain object only when calling a
special action, you have to define validators for individual arguments.
Therefore a slightly modified form of the @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate
annotation can be used, which is set in the comment block of the
controller action. It has the format @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate
*[variablename] [validators]*, in the example
below it is $pageName:
/**
* Creates a new page with a given name.
*
* @param string $pageName The name of the page which should be created.
* @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate("MyVendor\MyExtension\Domain\Validator\PageNameValidator", param="pageName")
*/
public function createPageAction(string $pageName): ResponseInterface
{
// ...
}
Here the parameter $pageName is checked with its own
validator.
Interaction of validators¶
For an argument of an action, the following validators are called:
- All
@TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validateannotations of the domain model are evaluated. - Validators defined in the action doc block with
@TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validateare called.
Let’s have a look at the interaction once more with an example:
// use TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate;
// use MyVendor\ExtbaseExample\Domain\Model\User;
/**
* Creates a website user for the given page name.
*
* @param string $pageName The name of the page where the user should be created.
* @param User $user The user which should be created.
* @Validate(param="pageName", validator="TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Validation\Validator\StringValidator")
* @Validate("MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Validator\CustomUserValidator", param="user")
*/
public function createUserAction(string $pageName, User $user): ResponseInterface
{
// ...
}
For $user all @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate annotations of the model are validated. Beyond that, the validator
\MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Validator\CustomUserValidator is used
to validate $user.
In some use cases, it is reasonable that incomplete
domain objects are given as arguments. That can be the case
for multi-page forms because after filling the first page, the domain
object is not complete. In this case you can use the annotation
@TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\IgnoreValidation("parameter"). This
prevents the processing of the @TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\Validate annotations in the
domain model and calling the validator class of the domain
object.
Case study: Edit an existing object¶
As of now, the edit form should be displayed again in case of a
validation error. Two actions are involved in editing the blog: The
editAction shows the form with the blog to be edited and the
updateAction saves the changes.
Tip
If you want to implement edit forms for the domain objects of your extension you should implement it according to the schema displayed here.
The editAction for the blog looks like this:
public function editAction(\MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Model\Blog $blog): ResponseInterface
{
$this->view->assign('blog', $blog);
}
The blog object to edit is passed and given to the view. The Fluid template than looks like this (slightly shortened and reduced to the important):
<f:form name="blog" object="{blog}" action="update">
<f:form.textfield property="title" />
<f:form.textarea property="description" />
<f:form.submit />
</f:form>
Note that the blog object to be edited is bound to the
form with object="{blog}". With this, you can reference a
property of the linked object with the help of the property
attribute of the form elements.
The name of the form (name=”blog”) is also important because it is
used as a variable name for the object to be sent. When submitting the form,
the updateAction is called with the blog object
as a parameter.
public function updateAction(\MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Model\Blog $blog): ResponseInterface
{
$this->blogRepository->update($blog);
}
So the name of the argument is $blog because the form
has the name blog. When no validation errors occur, the blog object will
be persisted with its changes.
Now have a look at what happens when the user inserts erroneous data
into the form. In this case, an error occurs when validating the
$blog arguments. Therefore instead of the
updateAction, the errorAction is called. This action routes the
request by returning a ForwardResponse to the last used action because
the form should be displayed again in case of an error. Additionally, an error
message is generated and given to the controller. Ergo: In case of a
validation error, the editAction is displayed
again.
As the erroneous object should be displayed again, it is important
that the updateAction and editAction use the
same argument names. In our example, the argument is called
$blog in both cases, so we are on the safe side.
There is another problem: The editAction
validates all parameters, but the blog object is not valid - the programm is
trapped in an endless loop. Therefore the argument
validation must be suppressed for the editAction. For this, the annotation
@TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\IgnoreValidation is needed. – The comment block
of the editAction must be changed like this:
<?php
declare(strict_types=1);
namespace MyVendor\BlogExample\Controller;
use Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface;
use TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation as Extbase;
use TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Mvc\Controller\ActionController;
class BlogController extends ActionController
{
/**
* @param \MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Model\Blog $blog The blog object
* @Extbase\IgnoreValidation("blog")
*/
public function editAction(\MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Model\Blog $blog): ResponseInterface
{
$this->view->assign('blog', $blog);
return $this->responseFactory->createHtmlResponse($this->view->render());
}
}
Now the blog object is not validated in the
editAction. So also, a non-valid blog object is
displayed correctly.
Tip
If Extbase throws the exception
TYPO3CMSExtbaseMvcExceptionInfiniteLoopException it signs that the
@TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\IgnoreValidation annotation is missing.
Fluid automatically adds the CSS class f3-form-error
to all erroneous fields - so you can frame them in red, for example, using
CSS. There is also a flashMessages ViewHelper, which outputs
the error messages of the validation.
Case study: Create an object¶
Here it is shown how to create a new blog object with a form.
Also, for creating a blog object, two actions are involved. The
newAction shows a form for creating an object, and
the createAction finally stores the
object.
The only difference to the editing of an object is that the
newAction is not always given an argument: when
first displaying the form, it is logical that no object is available
to be displayed. Therefore the argument must be marked as optional.
Here you will see all that we need. At first the controller code:
<?php
declare(strict_types=1);
use Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface;
use TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation as Extbase;
use TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Mvc\Controller\ActionController;
class BlogController extends ActionController
{
/**
* This action shows the 'new' form for the blog.
*
* @param \MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Model\Blog $newBlog The optional default values
* @Extbase\IgnoreValidation("newBlog")
*/
public function newAction(\MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Model\Blog $newBlog = NULL): ResponseInterface
{
$this->view->assign('newBlog', $newBlog);
return $this->responseFactory->createHtmlResponse($this->view->render());
}
/**
* This action creates the blog and stores it.
*
* @param \MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Model\Blog $newBlog
*/
public function createAction(\MyVendor\BlogExample\Domain\Model\Blog $newBlog): ResponseInterface
{
$this->blogRepository->add($newBlog);
return $this->htmlResponse();
}
}
The Fluid template for the NewAction looks
like this (in short form):
<f:flashMessages />
<f:form name="newBlog" object="{newBlog}" action="create">
<f:form.textfield property="title" />
<f:form.textarea property="description" />
<f:form.submit />
</f:form>
Again it is important that the newAction and the
createAction have the same argument name. This
also has to conform with the name of the Fluid template
(newBlog in the example). Also, the parameter for the
newAction must be marked as optional, and the
validation of the parameter must be suppressed with
@TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Annotation\IgnoreValidation. Finally, you can
output validation errors in the template using the flashMessages
ViewHelper when saving the data.
Figure 9-2 gives an overview of the behavior of Extbase when displaying, editing respectively creating of domain objects in the frontend.
Figure 9-2: Data flow of the form display and saving. When a validating error occurs, it is displayed again.
Mapping arguments¶
This section describes what happens during a request before the respective action is called, especially when sending a form. Because the HTTP protocol (and PHP) can only transfer arrays and strings, a large array with data is transferred when sending a form. In the action, domain objects are often expected as input parameters, so somehow, the array must become an object. That is done by Extbase during the Argument Mappings. It makes it possible that as a user of Extbase, you not only work with arrays, but you can change objects in forms or give over a complete object as parameter in links.
Here is a concrete example: Edit a blog object, like you got to know in
the last section (“Case study: Edit an existing object”). When you edit a
blog you see a form in which you can change the properties of the blog, in
our case title and description.
The Fluid form looks like this (shortened to the essential):
<f:form method="post" action="update" name="blog" object="{blog}">
<f:form.textfield property="title" />
<f:form.textarea property="description" />
</f:form>
If the form is submitted the data will be sent in the following manner to the server:
tx_blogexample_pi1[blog][__identity] = 5
tx_blogexample_pi1[blog][title] = My title
tx_blogexample_pi1[blog][description] = Description
First of all, the data is tagged with a prefix that contains the name
of the extension and the plugin (tx_blogexample_pi1). This
makes sure that no extensions have impact on each other. Furthermore,
all changed properties of the blog object are transferred in an array, in
this case title and description. As
a blog object needs a change, also its identity is needed.
This is why Fluid automatically adds the __identity
property for the blog object and fills it with the UID of the
blog.
Now on the server-side, a blog object must be created
out of this information. This is the job of the property mapper. Its
operation method is shown in figure 9-3.
For every argument, it must be decided first whether a new object has
to be created or if the work is based on an existing object. This will be
decided based on the identity property __identity. If this is
not part of the input data, a new object is created. Otherwise, the framework
knows the object identity and can continue working with it.
Tip
When you take a look at what is transferred to the server by the new action of the blog example, you will see that no identity properties are transferred - in this case, a new object is created as intended.
In the blog example from above, the __identity property is available,
therefore the object with the corresponding UID is fetched from the
repository and used for further modification.
When no properties should be changed, the object is given as an argument to the action. So that it is always persistent, that its changes to this object are saved automatically. <remark>!!!Sentence not clear</remark>
Figure 9-3: The internal control flow of the property mapper.
In this case, not only the __identity property is sent,
but also a new title and description for this
blog. For safety reasons, a copy of the persistent
object is applied. The properties of the copy are changed as given in the
request. In this case, title and description are
set new. The generated copy is yet a transient object (see section “live
cycle of objects” in chapter 2); that is, changes on the object are
not automatically persisted. The changed copy is
given to the action as an argument.
Now it is to tell the controller to explicitly
replace the existing persistent blog object with the modified
blog object. For this, the repository provides the method
update():
$this->blogRepository->update($blog);
With this, the changed object will be made into the persistent object: The changes are now permanently stored.
We want to assume a refinement of the argument mapping: When a link
to an action is generated, and the link contains an object as a parameter, the
object’s identity is transferred automatically. In the following
example, the UID is transferred instead of the blog
object:
<f:link.action action='show' arguments='{blog: blog}'>Show Blog</f:link.action>
The generated URL contains the identity of the blog object:
tx_blogexample_pi1[blog]=47. That is a short form of
tx_blogexample_pi1[blog][__Identity]=47. Therefore the
property mapper gets the blog object with identity 47 from the
repository and returns it directly without copying before.
After you have learned how you can make sure any invariants of domain objects, the focus will be directed to the secure programming of the complete extension.