Implement configurable URL schemes as an enhancement to URL management features

[folkstring@…]

I am proposing an enhancement to the URL management features of Mach-II. After working with buildUrl() extensively in a recent project, I found myself wishing for more features.

Here are the problems I was experiencing:

1. No way to easily retrieve a built URL for the current request

2. No way to easily pop in new values for one or two URL parameters (e.g., pagination, sorting columns)

3. Cumbersome syntax to pass in URL parameters as pipe-delimited string

4. Passing in URL parameters as a structure cannot be accomplished in one line on CF7

5. No way to hide names of URL parameters in built URLs (sometimes necessary when managing URLs through a rewrite program)

6. No way to guarantee the order of certain parameters in the built URL (again, necessary when rewriting URLs at the Web server)

To overcome these issues, I propose the following:

1. Provide buildCurrentUrl() method to build the URL for the current request

2. Provide an interface into the current URL to assign new values to specific parameters

3. Provide alternate syntax for passing URL parameters into buildUrl() -- specifically, use alternating name/value parameters:

buildUrl('parameter1', parameter1Value, 'parameter2', parameter2Value, ...)

4. Create new elements in Mach-II config XML to establish one or more URL schemes that can be called throughout the framework

I have attached a short text file with some sample syntax for the XML and some proposed object/method descriptions.

[folkstring@…]

Sample URL scheme syntax

[peterfarrell]

Definitely something already on the list for 2.0 (as I mentioned in my presentation at cf.Objective). Thanks for the suggestions.

[kurtwiersma]

This ticket has been chosen for Mach II 1.8. More information can be found on the MachII1.8SESImprovements wiki page.

[peterfarrell]

I was thinking it would be great if the property could optionally output the syntax required for Apache Rewrite to a location on disk which then could be included in an httpd.conf file via a link.. This would allow deploying a Mach-II application with route easier as you don't have to manually update the rewriting rules in Apache. Thoughts?

[peterfarrell]

Kurt, you'll need to add support for routes in the form tag library's form tag. Right now we have actionEvent and optionally actionModule / actionUrlParams attributes to build urls. I think we need to add actionRoute and actionRouteParams both of which would be mutually exclusive to routes versus event.

[peterfarrell]

I guess redirect needs to be upgraded as well to support routes as well.

[kurtwiersma]

We have decide not to implement #3 under the proposed buildUrl section.

[peterfarrell]

Just wanted to comment on item number 6 on the list of things to fix. I think we can fix this by taking in the incoming struct and building the url by sorting the struct keys. We currently don't sort the struct keys when building the URL so this should be an easy fix.

[peterfarrell]

Just wanted to mention that this feature enhancement is detailed in the M2SPF SES Improvements

[kurtwiersma]

[None] - buildCurrentUrl() now works with SES urlsn- Alpha ordered the url args for the url that come out of buildUrl()n- refs #32

[peterfarrell]

FYI, if you want a more name/value tag based format to do buildUrl check out the new <a> tag in the view custom tag library that ships with Mach-II 1.8. Check out the wiki for how to do it.