Enhanced views for Content/Location

In some cases, displaying a content/location via the built-in ViewController is not sufficient and will lead you to do many sub-requests in order to access different parameters.

Typical use cases are access to:

• Settings (either coming from ConfigResolver or ServiceContainer)
• Current content's ContentType object
• Current location's parent
• Current location's children count
• Main location and alternative locations for the current content
• etc…

In those cases, you may want to use your own controller to display the current content/location instead of using the built-in ViewController.

Description

This feature covers 2 general use cases:

• Lets you configure a custom controller with the configured matcher rules.
• Lets you override the built-in view controller in a clean way.

Matching custom controllers

This is possible with the following piece of configuration:

ezpublish:
    system:
        my_siteaccess:
            location_view:
                full:
                    custom_controller_test:
                        # The following will let you use your own custom controller for location #123
                        # (Here it will use AcmeTestBundle/Controller/DefaultController::viewLocationAction(),
                        # following the Symfony controller notation convention.
                        # Method viewLocationAction() must follow the same prototype as in the built-in ViewController
                        controller: AcmeTestBundle:Default:viewLocation
                        match:
                            Id\Location: 123

The only requirement here is that your action method has the same signature than ViewController::viewLocation() or ViewController::viewContent() (depending on what you're matching of course).

viewLocation() signature:

<?php
/**
 * Main action for viewing content through a location in the repository.
 *
 * [@param](https://github.com/param) int $locationId
 * [@param](https://github.com/param) string $viewType
 * [@param](https://github.com/param) boolean $layout
 * [@param](https://github.com/param) array $params
 *
 * [@throws](https://github.com/throws) \Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Exception\AccessDeniedException
 * [@throws](https://github.com/throws) \Exception
 *
 * [@return](https://github.com/return) \Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response
 */
public function viewLocation( $locationId, $viewType, $layout = false, array $params = array() )

viewContent() signature:

<?php
/**
 * Main action for viewing content.
 *
 * [@param](https://github.com/param) int $contentId
 * [@param](https://github.com/param) string $viewType
 * [@param](https://github.com/param) boolean $layout
 * [@param](https://github.com/param) array $params
 *
 * [@throws](https://github.com/throws) \Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Exception\AccessDeniedException
 * [@throws](https://github.com/throws) \Exception
 *
 * [@return](https://github.com/return) \Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response
 */
public function viewContent( $contentId, $viewType, $layout = false, array $params = array() )

Note:

Controller selection doesn't apply to block_view since you can already use your own controller to display blocks.

Caching

Using your own controller, it is your responsibility to define cache rules, like for every custom controller !

So don't forget to set cache rules and the appropriate X-Location-Id header in the returned Response object.

See built-in ViewController for more details on this.

Overriding the built-in ViewController

One other way to keep control on what is passed to the view is to use your own controller instead of the built-in ViewController.

Base ViewController being defined as a service, with a service alias, this can be easily achieved from your bundle's configuration:

parameters:
    my.custom.view_controller.class: Acme\TestBundle\MyViewController

services:
    my.custom.view_controller:
        class: %my.custom.view_controller.class%
        arguments: [[@some_dependency](https://github.com/some_dependency), [@other_dependency](https://github.com/other_dependency)]

    # Change the alias here and make it point to your own controller
    ez_content:
        alias: my.custom.view_controller

Warning ! Doing so will completely override the built-in ViewController! Use this at your own risk!