Attention

TYPO3 v9 has reached its end-of-life September 30th, 2021 and is not maintained by the community anymore. Looking for a stable version? Use the version switch on the top left.

You can order Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) here: TYPO3 ELTS.

Advanced Routing Configuration (for Extensions)

While Page based routing works out of the box, routing for extensions has to be configured explicitely in your site configuration.

Note

There is currently no graphical user interface available to configure extended routing. All adjustments need to be done via manually editing your web sites' site configuration config.yaml file (located in config/sites/<yoursite>/config.yaml).

To map $_GET parameters to routes, a concept called Enhancers and Aspects has been introduced.

An enhancer creates variants of a specific page-based route for a specific purpose (e.g. one plugin, one Extbase plugin) and enhances the existing route path which can then contain flexible values, so-called "placeholders".

On top, aspects can be registered to a specific enhancer to modify a specific placeholder, like static human readable names within the route path, or dynamically generated values.

To give you an overview of what the distinction is, we take a regular page which is available at

https://example.org/path-to/my-page

to access the Page with ID 13.

Enhancers are a way to extend this route with placeholders on top of this specific route to a page.

https://example.org/path-to/my-page/products/<product-name>

The suffix /products/<product-name> to the base route of the page is added by an enhancer. The placeholder variable which is added by the curly braces can then be statically or dynamically resolved or built by an Aspect (more commonly known as a Mapper).

It is possible to use the same enhancer multiple times with different configurations. However, be aware that it is not possible to combine multiple variants / enhancers matching multiple configurations.

However, custom enhancers can be built to overcome special use cases where e.g. two plugins with multiple parameters each could be configured. Otherwise, the first variant matching the URL parameters is used for generation and resolving.

Enhancers

There are two types of enhancers: decorators and route enhancers. An route enhancer is there to replace a set of placeholders and fill in URL parameters on URL generation and resolving them properly later-on. Substitution of the values with aliases can be achieved by Aspects. To simplify: A route enhancer specifies how the full route path looks like and which variables are available whereas an aspect takes care of mapping a single variable to a value.

TYPO3 comes with the following route enhancers out of the box:

  • Simple Enhancer (enhancer type "Simple")

  • Plugin Enhancer (enhancer type "Plugin")

  • Extbase Plugin Enhancer (enhancer type "Extbase")

TYPO3 provides the following decorators out of the box:

  • PageTypeDecorator (enhancer type "PageType")

Custom enhancers can be registered by adding an entry to an extensions ext_localconf.php.

$GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SYS']['routing']['enhancers']['CustomEnhancer'] = \MyVendor\MyPackage\Routing\CustomEnhancer::class;

Within a configuration, an enhancer always evaluates the following properties:

  • type - the short name of the enhancer as registered within $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']. This is mandatory.

  • limitToPages - an array of page IDs where this enhancer should be called. This is optional. This property (array) only triggers an enhancer for specific pages. In case of special plugin pages it is recommended to only enhance those pages with the plugin, to speed up performance for building page routes of all other pages.

Simple Enhancer

The Simple Enhancer works with various route arguments to map them to an argument to be used later-on.

index.php?id=13&category=241&tag=Benni results in https://example.org/path-to/my-page/show-by-category/241/Benni

The configuration looks like this:

routeEnhancers:
  # Unique name for the enhancers, used internally for referencing
  CategoryListing:
    type: Simple
    limitToPages: [13]
    routePath: '/show-by-category/{category_id}/{tag}'
    defaults:
      tag: ''
    requirements:
      category_id: '[0-9]{1,3}'
      tag: '[a-zA-Z0-9].*'
    _arguments:
      category_id: 'category'

The configuration option routePath defines the static keyword and the available placeholders.

Note

For people coming from RealURL usage in previous versions: The routePath can be loosely compared to some as "postVarSets".

The defaults section defines which URL parameters are optional. If the parameters are omitted on generation, they can receive a default value, and do not need a placeholder - it is possible to add them at the very end of the routePath.

The requirements section exactly specifies what kind of parameter should be added to that route as regular expression. This way, it is configurable to only allow integer values for e.g. pagination. If the requirements are too loose, a URL signature parameter ("cHash") is added to the end of the URL which cannot be removed.

Hint

Make sure you define your requirements as strict as possible.

The _arguments section defines what Route Parameters should be available to the system. In this example, the placeholder is called category_id but the URL generation receives the argument category, so this is mapped to that name (so you can access/use it as category in your custom code).

Plugin Enhancer

The Plugin Enhancer works with plugins on a page that are commonly known as Pi-Based Plugins, where previously the following GET/POST variables were used:

index.php?id=13&tx_felogin_pi1[forgot]=1&&tx_felogin_pi1[user]=82&tx_felogin_pi1[hash]=ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ012345

The base for the plugin enhancer is to configure a so-called "namespace", in this case tx_felogin_pi1 - the plugin's namespace.

The Plugin Enhancer explicitly sets exactly one additional variant for a specific use-case. In case of Frontend Login, we would need to set up multiple configurations of Plugin Enhancer for forgot and recover passwords.

routeEnhancers:
  ForgotPassword:
    type: Plugin
    limitToPages: [13]
    routePath: '/forgot-password/{user}/{hash}'
    namespace: 'tx_felogin_pi1'
    defaults:
      forgot: '1'
    requirements:
      user: '[0-9]{1,3}'
      hash: '^[a-zA-Z0-9]{32}$'

If a URL is generated with the given parameters to link to a page, the result will look like this:

https://example.org/path-to/my-page/forgot-password/82/ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ012345

Note

If the input given to generate the URL does not meet the requirements, the route enhancer does not offer the variant and the parameters are added to the URL as regular query parameters. If e.g. the user parameter would be more than three characters, or non-numeric, this enhancer would not match anymore.

As you see, the Plugin Enhancer is used to specify placeholders and requirements, with a given namespace.

If you want to replace the user ID (in this example "82") with the username, you would need an aspect that can be registered within any enhancer, see below for details.

Extbase Plugin Enhancer

When creating extbase plugins, it is very common to have multiple controller/action combinations. The Extbase Plugin Enhancer is therefore an extension to the regular Plugin Enhancer, providing the functionality of generating multiple variants, typically based on the available controller/action pairs.

Warning

Do not set features.skipDefaultArguments in your extbase plugin configuration as that will result in missing parameters to be mapped - then no matching route configuration can be found.

The Extbase Plugin enhancer with the configuration below would now apply to the following URLs:

  • index.php?id=13&tx_news_pi1[controller]=News&tx_news_pi1[action]=list

  • index.php?id=13&tx_news_pi1[controller]=News&tx_news_pi1[action]=list&tx_news_pi1[page]=5

  • index.php?id=13&tx_news_pi1[controller]=News&tx_news_pi1[action]=list&tx_news_pi1[year]=2018&tx_news_pi1[month]=8

  • index.php?id=13&tx_news_pi1[controller]=News&tx_news_pi1[action]=detail&tx_news_pi1[news]=13

  • index.php?id=13&tx_news_pi1[controller]=News&tx_news_pi1[action]=tag&tx_news_pi1[tag]=11

And generate the following URLs

  • https://example.org/path-to/my-page/list/

  • https://example.org/path-to/my-page/list/5

  • https://example.org/path-to/my-page/list/2018/8

  • https://example.org/path-to/my-page/detail/in-the-year-2525

  • https://example.org/path-to/my-page/tag/future

routeEnhancers:
  NewsPlugin:
    type: Extbase
    limitToPages: [13]
    extension: News
    plugin: Pi1
    routes:
      - routePath: '/list/'
        _controller: 'News::list'
      - routePath: '/list/{page}'
        _controller: 'News::list'
        _arguments:
          page: '@widget_0/currentPage'
      - routePath: '/detail/{news_title}'
        _controller: 'News::detail'
        _arguments:
          news_title: 'news'
      - routePath: '/tag/{tag_name}'
        _controller: 'News::list'
        _arguments:
          tag_name: 'overwriteDemand/tags'
      - routePath: '/list/{year}/{month}'
        _controller: 'News::list'
        _arguments:
          year: 'overwriteDemand/year'
          month: 'overwriteDemand/month'
        requirements:
          year: '\d+'
          month: '\d+'
    defaultController: 'News::list'
    defaults:
      page: '0'
    requirements:
      page: '\d+'
    aspects:
      news_title:
        type: PersistedAliasMapper
        tableName: tx_news_domain_model_news
        routeFieldName: path_segment
      page:
        type: StaticRangeMapper
        start: '1'
        end: '100'
      month:
        type: StaticRangeMapper
        start: '1'
        end: '12'
      year:
        type: StaticRangeMapper
        start: '1984'
        end: '2525'
      tag_name:
        type: PersistedAliasMapper
        tableName: tx_news_domain_model_tag
        routeFieldName: slug

In this example, the _arguments parameter is used to set sub properties of an array, which is typically used within demand objects for filtering functionality. Additionally, it is using both the short and the long form of writing route configurations.

To understand what's happening in the aspects part, read on.

Note

For the Extbase Plugin Enhancer, it is also possible to configure the namespace directly by skipping extension and plugin properties and just using the namespace property as in the regular Plugin Enhancer.

Page Type Decorator

The PageType Enhancer (Decorator) allows to add a suffix to the existing route (including existing other enhancers) to map a page type (GET parameter &type=) to a suffix.

It is possible to map various page types to endings:

Example TypoScript:

page = PAGE
page.typeNum = 0
page.10 = TEXT
page.10.value = Default page

rssfeed = PAGE
rssfeed.typeNum = 13
rssfeed.10 < plugin.tx_myplugin
rssfeed.config.disableAllHeaderCode = 1
rssfeed.config.additionalHeaders.10.header = Content-Type: xml/rss

jsonview = PAGE
jsonview.typeNum = 26
jsonview.10 = USER
jsonview.10.userFunc = MyVendor\MyExtension\Controller\JsonPageController->renderAction
jsonview.10.config.disableAllHeaderCode = 1
jsonview.10.config.additionalHeaders.10.header = Content-Type: application/json

Now configure the Enhancer in your site's config.yaml file like this:

routeEnhancers:
   PageTypeSuffix:
      type: PageType
      default: ''
      map:
         'rss.feed': 13
         '.json': 26

The map allows to add a filename or a file ending and map this to a page.typeNum value.

It is also possible to set default to e.g. ".html" to add a ".html" suffix to all default pages.

routeEnhancers:
   PageTypeSuffix:
      type: PageType
      default: '.json'
      index: 'index'
      map:
         'rss.feed': 13
         '.json': 26

The index property is used when generating links on root-level page, thus, instead of e.g. having /en/.json thus would then result in /en/index.json.

Note

Please note that the implementation is a Decorator Enhancer, which means that the PageTypeEnhancer is only there for adding suffixes to an existing route / variant, but not to substitute something within the middle of a human readable URL segment.

Aspects

Now that we've looked into ways on how to extend a route to a page with arguments, and to put them into the URL path as segments, the detailed logic within one placeholder is in an aspect. The most common practice of an aspect is a so-called mapper. For example mapping a parameter {news} which is a UID within TYPO3 to the actual news slug, which is a field within the database table containing the cleaned/sanitized title of the news (e.g. "software-updates-2019" maps to news ID 10).

An aspect can be a way to modify, beautify or map an argument from the URL generation into a placeholder. That's why the terms "Mapper" and "Modifier" will pop up, depending on the different cases.

Aspects are registered within one single enhancer configuration with the option aspects and can be used with any enhancer.

Let's start with some simpler examples first:

StaticValueMapper

The StaticValueMapper replaces values simply on a 1:1 mapping list of an argument into a speaking segment, useful for a checkout process to define the steps into "cart", "shipping", "billing", "overview" and "finish", or in a simpler example to create human readable segments for all available months.

The configuration could look like this:

routeEnhancers:
  NewsArchive:
    type: Extbase
    limitToPages: [13]
    extension: News
    plugin: Pi1
    routes:
      - { routePath: '/{year}/{month}', _controller: 'News::archive' }
    defaultController: 'News::list'
    defaults:
      month: ''
    aspects:
      month:
        type: StaticValueMapper
        map:
          january: 1
          february: 2
          march: 3
          april: 4
          may: 5
          june: 6
          july: 7
          august: 8
          september: 9
          october: 10
          november: 11
          december: 12

You see the placeholder "month" where the aspect replaces the value to a human readable url path segment.

It is possible to add an optional localeMap to that aspect to use the locale of a value to use in multi-language setups.

routeEnhancers:
  NewsArchive:
    type: Extbase
    limitToPages: [13]
    extension: News
    plugin: Pi1
    routes:
      - { routePath: '/{year}/{month}', _controller: 'News::archive' }
    defaultController: 'News::list'
    defaults:
      month: ''
    aspects:
      month:
        type: StaticValueMapper
        map:
          january: 1
          february: 2
          march: 3
          april: 4
          may: 5
          june: 6
          july: 7
          august: 8
          september: 9
          october: 10
          november: 11
          december: 12
        localeMap:
          - locale: 'de_.*'
            map:
              januar: 1
              februar: 2
              maerz: 3
              april: 4
              mai: 5
              juni: 6
              juli: 7
              august: 8
              september: 9
              oktober: 10
              november: 11
              dezember: 12

LocaleModifier

The enhanced part of a route path could be /archive/{year}/{month} - however, in multi-language setups, it should be possible to rename /archive/ depending on the language that is given for this page translation. This modifier is a good example where a route path is modified but is not affected by arguments.

The configuration could look like this:

routeEnhancers:
  NewsArchive:
    type: Extbase
    limitToPages: [13]
    extension: News
    plugin: Pi1
    routes:
      - { routePath: '/{localized_archive}/{year}/{month}', _controller: 'News::archive' }
    defaultController: 'News::list'
    aspects:
      localized_archive:
        type: LocaleModifier
        default: 'archive'
        localeMap:
          - locale: 'fr_FR.*|fr_CA.*'
            value: 'archives'
          - locale: 'de_DE.*'
            value: 'archiv'

You'll see the placeholder "localized_archive" where the aspect replaces the localized archive based on the locale of the language of that page.

StaticRangeMapper

A static range mapper allows to avoid the cHash and narrow down the available possibilities for a placeholder, and to explicitly define a range for a value, which is recommended for all kinds of pagination functionality.

routeEnhancers:
  NewsPlugin:
    type: Extbase
    limitToPages: [13]
    extension: News
    plugin: Pi1
    routes:
      - { routePath: '/list/{page}', _controller: 'News::list', _arguments: {'page': '@widget_0/currentPage'} }
    defaultController: 'News::list'
    defaults:
      page: '0'
    requirements:
      page: '\d+'
    aspects:
      page:
        type: StaticRangeMapper
        start: '1'
        end: '100'

This limits down the pagination to max. 100 pages, if a user calls the news list with page 101, then the route enhancer does not match and would not apply the placeholder.

A range larger than 1000 is not allowed.

PersistedAliasMapper

If an extension ships with a slug field, or a different field used for the speaking URL path, this database field can be used to build the URL:

routeEnhancers:
  NewsPlugin:
    type: Extbase
    limitToPages: [13]
    extension: News
    plugin: Pi1
    routes:
      - { routePath: '/detail/{news_title}', _controller: 'News::detail', _arguments: {'news_title': 'news'} }
    defaultController: 'News::detail'
    aspects:
      news_title:
        type: PersistedAliasMapper
        tableName: 'tx_news_domain_model_news'
        routeFieldName: 'path_segment'
        routeValuePrefix: '/'

The PersistedAliasMapper looks up the table and field to map the given value to a URL. The property tableName points to the database table, the property routeFieldName is the field which will be used within the route path for example.

The special routeValuePrefix is used for TCA type slug fields where the prefix / is within all fields of the field names, which should be removed in the case above.

If a field is used for routeFieldName that is not prepared to be put into the route path, e.g. the news title field, you must ensured that this is unique and suitable for the use in an URL. On top, if there are special characters like spaces will not be converted automatically. Therefor, usage of a slug TCA field is recommended.

PersistedPatternMapper

When a placeholder should be fetched from multiple fields of the database, the PersistedPatternMapper is for you. It allows to combine various fields into one variable, ensuring a unique value by e.g. adding the UID to the field without having the need of adding a custom slug field to the system.

routeEnhancers:
  Blog:
    type: Extbase
    limitToPages: [13]
    extension: BlogExample
    plugin: Pi1
    routes:
      - { routePath: '/blog/{blogpost}', _controller: 'Blog::detail', _arguments: {'blogpost': 'post'} }
    defaultController: 'Blog::detail'
    aspects:
      blogpost:
        type: PersistedPatternMapper
        tableName: 'tx_blogexample_domain_model_post'
        routeFieldPattern: '^(?P<title>.+)-(?P<uid>\d+)$'
        routeFieldResult: '{title}-{uid}'

The routeFieldPattern option builds the title and uid fields from the database, the routeFieldResult shows how the placeholder will be output. As mentioned above however, special characters in the title might still be a problem. The PersistedPatternMapper might be a good choice if you are upgrading from a previous version and had URLs with an appended UID for uniqueness.

Aspect Precedence

Route requirements are ignored for route variables having a corresponding setting in aspects. Imagine an aspect that is mapping internal value 1 to route value one and vice versa - it is not possible to explicitly define the requirements for this case - which is why aspects take precedence.

The following example illustrates the mentioned dilemma between route generation and resolving:

routeEnhancers:
  MyPlugin:
    type: 'Plugin'
    namespace: 'my'
    routePath: 'overview/{month}'
    requirements:
      # note: it does not make any sense to declare all values here again
      month: '^(\d+|january|february|march|april|...|december)$'
    aspects:
      month:
        type: 'StaticValueMapper'
        map:
          january: '1'
          february: '2'
          march: '3'
          april: '4'
          may: '5'
          june: '6'
          july: '7'
          august: '8'
          september: '9'
          october: '10'
          november: '11'
          december: '12'

The map in the previous example is already defining all valid values. That's why aspects take precedence over requirements for a specific routePath definition.

Behind the Scenes

While accessing a page in TYPO3 in the Frontend, all arguments are currently built back into the global GET parameters, but are also available as so-called PageArguments object. The PageArguments object is then used to sign and verify the parameters, to ensure that they are valid, when handing them further down the frontend request chain.

If there are dynamic parameters (= parameters which are not strictly limited), a verification GET parameter cHash is added, which can and should not be removed from the URL. The concept of manually activating or deactivating the generation of a cHash is not optional anymore, but strictly built-in to ensure proper URL handling. If you really have the requirement to not have a cHash argument, ensure that all placeholders are having strict definitions on what could be the result of the page segment (e.g. pagination), and feel free to build custom mappers.

All existing APIs like typolink or functionality evaluate the new Page Routing API directly.

Note

Please note that if you update the Site configuration with enhancers that you need to clear all caches.