Hangout: 'Magic views' and Profiles.

This hangout took place on the 14th March 2014.

The people in the room were:
* @michael
* @b360

The topic of discussion was: "How do I get stuff out to a profile".

Additional discussion was: "What is a Magic View"

The things your interested in are finding the differences between magic views and how to get something out on a profile.


So what did you think magic views were? If I said 'Magic View' to you what do you think that does?


Close.

Here's my take on Magic Views. What a magic view does is it adds a fallback for the URL.

So where we're at right now, were at /marketplace/system_update

and so the module is the '/marketplace/' (section of the URL).

The router knows to send anything with the url /marketplace/ to the jrMarketplace module.

Then the jrMarketplace module will then define a function to take care of that view. So its going to have a '/system_update' function that claims that url.

That function can be found in the index.php file for the module and will be called view_jrMarketplace_system_update

and what a magic view does is its a fallback function. So if the jrMarketplace module didn't have a function defined for 'system_update', then the system is going to fallback and look for any magic views that exist for that URL.

Instead of just going straight to a 404 page when the router finds that the jrMarketplace function doesn't have a function defined, the router looks for a magic view defined by any other modules to provide output for that url.

So a good example is the 'download' magic view or the 'image' magic view.

Example:
Instead of the jrFile module having to provide a function to allow downloads for any files in its datastore, it leaves that task to the 'download' magic view provided by the core.

So right now we are on /profile/image/.....

The thing taking care of the /image/ part of this routing system url is a magic view provided by the jrImage module.

Normally what you'd expect to find is the standard routing system.
{jamroom url}/{module url}/{function url}/{function parameters}....

So in this case the '/image/' url you would expect to find corresponds to a defined function in the jrProfile module.

However in this case the '/image/' is a magic view because its not been defined by the jrProfile module specifically.

Its been defined by the jrImage module.

The jrImage module provides the magic view '/image/' and essentially says to all other modules "Hey, look, you can use this function instead of having to define your own function to display images."


Yeah. It's like a fallback function. So if you look at all the other parmeters being passed into the '/image/' function in the current URL:
/profile/image/profile_image/6/small/crop=auto/_v=1385548288

Instead of those parameters being passed into a function in the profile module, its being passed into a function defined in the jrImage module.

So you don't have to have 2 copies of a function to display an image.


No, you don't need to do anything to use it, its just there.


That's exactly right. It's just there. You don't have to do anything for your module to be able to use it.

The profile module can ask the user for an image, then store that image in its datastore, but it doesn't need to provide a function to go and get that image.

The profile module can 'do nothing' and let the jrImage magic view do all the work.

Example:
If the jrProfile module allowed the user to upload an extra image, it could use the '/image/' magic view to display that image.

The '/image/' magic view can be used by any existing modules or any modules that may be created in the future that also want to store images in their datastore.

If you had to build a function to go get the image for every module that you built, you wouldn't bother with all the extra functionality that exists in the function that is provided by the jrImage module.

You probably would not bother putting in image resizing, cropping and all the other features that the jrImage module has built into its function because its just over-kill.

Me too mate.


Right now there's nothing in a PDF for JR5 documentation.

But if your using PhpStorm then what I'd normally do is to take the functions name 'image' then look in the modules 'include.php' file for the _init() function for any defined 'magic_view'.

You can find a lot of documentation directly in the code via PhpStorm by using the ctrl+q combo while the cursor is positioned over a function.