Controller¶

The controller serves as the entry point into Calendar Base extension from the outside world. In a typical TYPO3 extension, all requests come in through the _pi1 class. Within the Calendar Base extension, these same requests are received by the controller. Based on conf variables, as well as GET/POST vars, the controller is able to determine what requests to make of the model. A URL such as http://mys ite.com/index.php?id=17&tx_cal_controller[view]=event&tx_cal_contr oller[type]=tx_cal_example&tx_cal_controller[uid]=18 would kick off processing in the controller to request an event of type tx_cal_example with uid 18 from the model. Once this event was returned, it would be passed along to the single view.

Separated from the main controller are a model (back) controller and a view (front) controller. These controllers serve to hide implementation details from the main controller while also providing a simplified interface. Each controller basically serves as a wrapper to TYPO3 Services of the cal_view or cal_model type.

The model controller provides two methods: find() and findAll(). The find() method is used to look up a specific event, based on its type and uid. From the type, we can determine its service key, and get the event’s class from all of the calendar models available. One we have the class, we can call its find() method to return the correct event object and pass that object back to the main controller. The findAll() method operates in a similar way, but rather than getting a single event class, it uses TYPO3 Services to get all event classes. For each event class, it calls the findAll() method to return every event, and pass the compiled list of events back to the main controller.

The view controller acts in a very similar manner to the model controller. Rather than providing find() and findAll() methods, however, it provides draw() and drawSingle() methods. The draw() method takes a view name and a list of events as arguments. From this view name, we can perform a service lookup to get the object representing that view and call its draw() method. HTML is returned from this draw method and returned to the main controller. The drawSingle() method behaves the same way as the draw() method but takes a single event rather than many events.