Routing

Routing is a feature that maps URLs to controller actions. It was added to CakePHP to make pretty URLs more configurable and flexible. Using Apache's mod_rewrite is not required for using routes, but it will make your address bar look much more tidy.

Routing in CakePHP also encompasses the idea of reverse routing, where an array of parameters can be reversed into a string URL. By using reverse routing, you can easily re-factor your application's URL structure without having to update all your code.

routes.php

Routes Configuration

Routes in an application are configured in app/Config/routes.php. This file is included by the Dispatcher when handling routes and allows you to define application specific routes you want used. Routes declared in this file are processed top to bottom when incoming requests are matched. This means that the order you place routes can affect how routes are parsed. It's generally a good idea to place most frequently visited routes at the top of the routes file if possible. This will save having to check a number of routes that won't match on each request.

Routes are parsed and matched, in the order they are connected in. If you define two similar routes, the first defined route will have higher priority over the one defined latter. After connecting routes you can manipulate the order of routes using Router::promote().

CakePHP also comes with a few default routes to get you started. These can be disabled later on once you are sure you don't need them. See Disabling Default Routes on how to disable the default routing.

Default Routing

Before you learn about configuring your own routes, you should know that CakePHP comes configured with a default set of routes. CakePHP's default routing will get you pretty far in any application. You can access an action directly via the URL by putting its name in the request. You can also pass parameters to your controller actions using the URL. :

// URL pattern default routes:
http://example.com/controller/action/param1/param2/param3

The URL /posts/view maps to the view() action of the PostsController, and /products/view_clearance maps to the view_clearance() action of the ProductsController. If no action is specified in the URL, the index() method is assumed.

The default routing setup also allows you to pass parameters to your actions using the URL. A request for /posts/view/25 would be equivalent to calling view(25) on the PostsController, for example. The default routing also provides routes for plugins, and prefix routes should you choose to use those features.

The built-in routes live in Cake/Config/routes.php. You can disable the default routing by removing them from your application's routes.php file.

:controller, :action, :plugin

Connecting Routes

Defining your own routes allows you to define how your application will respond to a given URL. Define your own routes in the app/Config/routes.php file using the Router::connect() method.

The connect() method takes up to three parameters: the URL you wish to match, the default values for your route elements, and regular expression rules to help the router match elements in the URL.

The basic format for a route definition is:

Router::connect(
    'URL',
    array('default' => 'defaultValue'),
    array('option' => 'matchingRegex')
);

The first parameter is used to tell the router what sort of URL you're trying to control. The URL is a normal slash delimited string, but can also contain a wildcard (*) or Route Elements. Using a wildcard tells the router that you are willing to accept any additional arguments supplied. Routes without a * only match the exact template pattern supplied.

Once you've specified a URL, you use the last two parameters of connect() to tell CakePHP what to do with a request once it has been matched. The second parameter is an associative array. The keys of the array should be named after the route elements in the URL, or the default elements: :controller, :action, and :plugin. The values in the array are the default values for those keys. Let's look at some basic examples before we start using the third parameter of connect():

Router::connect(
    '/pages/*',
    array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'display')
);

This route is found in the routes.php file distributed with CakePHP. This route matches any URL starting with /pages/ and hands it to the display() action of the PagesController(); The request /pages/products would be mapped to PagesController->display('products').

In addition to the greedy star /* there is also the /** trailing star syntax. Using a trailing double star, will capture the remainder of a URL as a single passed argument. This is useful when you want to use an argument that included a / in it:

Router::connect(
    '/pages/**',
    array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'show')
);

The incoming URL of /pages/the-example-/-and-proof would result in a single passed argument of the-example-/-and-proof.

Added in version 2.1

The trailing double star was added in 2.1.

You can use the second parameter of Router::connect() to provide any routing parameters that are composed of the default values of the route:

Router::connect(
    '/government',
    array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'display', 5)
);

This example shows how you can use the second parameter of connect() to define default parameters. If you built a site that features products for different categories of customers, you might consider creating a route. This allows you link to /government rather than /pages/display/5.

NOTE

Although you can connect alternate routes, the default routes will continue to work. In this setting, you can access a single piece of content from 2 different URLs. See Disabling Default Routes to disable default routes, and only provide the URLs you define.

Another common use for the Router is to define an "alias" for a controller. Let's say that instead of accessing our regular URL at /users/some_action/5, we'd like to be able to access it by /cooks/some_action/5. The following route easily takes care of that:

Router::connect(
    '/cooks/:action/*', array('controller' => 'users')
);

This is telling the Router that any url beginning with /cooks/ should be sent to the users controller. The action called will depend on the value of the :action parameter. By using Route Elements, you can create variable routes, that accept user input or variables. The above route also uses the greedy star. The greedy star indicates to Router that this route should accept any additional positional arguments given. These arguments will be made available in the Passed Arguments array.

When generating URLs, routes are used too. Using array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'some_action', 5) as a url will output /cooks/some_action/5 if the above route is the first match found.

By default all named and passed arguments are extracted from URLs matching greedy templates. However, you can configure how and which named arguments are parsed using Router::connectNamed() if you need to.

Route Elements

You can specify your own route elements and doing so gives you the power to define places in the URL where parameters for controller actions should lie. When a request is made, the values for these route elements are found in $this->request->params on the controller. This is different than how named parameters are handled, so note the difference: named parameters (/controller/action/name:value) are found in $this->request->params['named'], whereas custom route element data is found in $this->request->params. When you define a custom route element, you can optionally specify a regular expression - this tells CakePHP how to know if the URL is correctly formed or not. If you choose to not provide a regular expression, any non / will be treated as part of the parameter:

Router::connect(
    '/:controller/:id',
    array('action' => 'view'),
    array('id' => '[0-9]+')
);

This simple example illustrates how to create a quick way to view models from any controller by crafting a URL that looks like /controllername/:id. The URL provided to connect() specifies two route elements: :controller and :id. The :controller element is a CakePHP default route element, so the router knows how to match and identify controller names in URLs. The :id element is a custom route element, and must be further clarified by specifying a matching regular expression in the third parameter of connect().

NOTE

Patterns used for route elements must not contain any capturing groups. If they do, Router will not function correctly.

Once this route has been defined, requesting /apples/5 is the same as requesting /apples/view/5. Both would call the view() method of the ApplesController. Inside the view() method, you would need to access the passed ID at $this->request->params['id'].

If you have a single controller in your application and you do not want the controller name to appear in the URL, you can map all URLs to actions in your controller. For example, to map all URLs to actions of the home controller, e.g have URLs like /demo instead of /home/demo, you can do the following:

Router::connect('/:action', array('controller' => 'home'));

If you would like to provide a case insensitive URL, you can use regular expression inline modifiers:

Router::connect(
    '/:userShortcut',
    array('controller' => 'teachers', 'action' => 'profile', 1),
    array('userShortcut' => '(?i:principal)')
);

One more example, and you'll be a routing pro:

Router::connect(
    '/:controller/:year/:month/:day',
    array('action' => 'index'),
    array(
        'year' => '[12][0-9]{3}',
        'month' => '0[1-9]|1[012]',
        'day' => '0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01]'
    )
);

This is rather involved, but shows how powerful routes can really become. The URL supplied has four route elements. The first is familiar to us: it's a default route element that tells CakePHP to expect a controller name.

Next, we specify some default values. Regardless of the controller, we want the index() action to be called.

Finally, we specify some regular expressions that will match years, months and days in numerical form. Note that parenthesis (grouping) are not supported in the regular expressions. You can still specify alternates, as above, but not grouped with parenthesis.

Once defined, this route will match /articles/2007/02/01, /posts/2004/11/16, handing the requests to the index() actions of their respective controllers, with the date parameters in $this->request->params.

There are several route elements that have special meaning in CakePHP, and should not be used unless you want the special meaning

• controller Used to name the controller for a route.
• action Used to name the controller action for a route.
• plugin Used to name the plugin a controller is located in.
• prefix Used for Prefix Routing
• ext Used for File Extensions routing.

Passing Parameters to Action

When connecting routes using Route Elements you may want to have routed elements be passed arguments instead. By using the 3rd argument of Router::connect() you can define which route elements should also be made available as passed arguments:

// SomeController.php
public function view($articleId = null, $slug = null) {
    // some code here...
}

// routes.php
Router::connect(
    '/blog/:id-:slug', // E.g. /blog/3-CakePHP_Rocks
    array('controller' => 'blog', 'action' => 'view'),
    array(
        // order matters since this will simply map ":id" to
        // $articleId in your action
        'pass' => array('id', 'slug'),
        'id' => '[0-9]+'
    )
);

And now, thanks to the reverse routing capabilities, you can pass in the url array like below and CakePHP will know how to form the URL as defined in the routes:

// view.ctp
// this will return a link to /blog/3-CakePHP_Rocks
echo $this->Html->link('CakePHP Rocks', array(
    'controller' => 'blog',
    'action' => 'view',
    'id' => 3,
    'slug' => 'CakePHP_Rocks'
));

Per-Route Named Parameters

While you can control named parameters on a global scale using Router::connectNamed() you can also control named parameter behavior at the route level using the 3rd argument of Router::connect():

Router::connect(
    '/:controller/:action/*',
    array(),
    array(
        'named' => array(
            'wibble',
            'fish' => array('action' => 'index'),
            'fizz' => array('controller' => array('comments', 'other')),
            'buzz' => 'val-[\d]+'
        )
    )
);

The above route definition uses the named key to define how several named parameters should be treated. Lets go through each of the various rules one-by-one:

• 'wibble' has no additional information. This means it will always parse if found in a URL matching this route.
• 'fish' has an array of conditions, containing the 'action' key. This means that fish will only be parsed as a named parameter if the action is also index.
• 'fizz' also has an array of conditions. However, it contains two controllers, this means that 'fizz' will only be parsed if the controller matches one of the names in the array.
• 'buzz' has a string condition. String conditions are treated as regular expression fragments. Only values for buzz matching the pattern will be parsed.

If a named parameter is used and it does not match the provided criteria, it will be treated as a passed argument instead of a named parameter.

admin routing, prefix routing

Prefix Routing

Many applications require an administration section where privileged users can make changes. This is often done through a special URL such as /admin/users/edit/5. In CakePHP, prefix routing can be enabled from within the core configuration file by setting the prefixes with Routing.prefixes. Note that prefixes, although related to the router, are to be configured in app/Config/core.php:

Configure::write('Routing.prefixes', array('admin'));

In your controller, any action with an admin_ prefix will be called. Using our users example, accessing the URL /admin/users/edit/5 would call the method admin_edit of our UsersController passing 5 as the first parameter. The view file used would be app/View/Users/admin_edit.ctp

You can map the URL /admin to your admin_index action of pages controller using following route:

Router::connect(
    '/admin',
    array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'index', 'admin' => true)
);

You can configure the Router to use multiple prefixes too. By adding additional values to Routing.prefixes. If you set:

Configure::write('Routing.prefixes', array('admin', 'manager'));

CakePHP will automatically generate routes for both the admin and manager prefixes. Each configured prefix will have the following routes generated for it:

Router::connect(
    "/{$prefix}/:plugin/:controller",
    array('action' => 'index', 'prefix' => $prefix, $prefix => true)
);
Router::connect(
    "/{$prefix}/:plugin/:controller/:action/*",
    array('prefix' => $prefix, $prefix => true)
);
Router::connect(
    "/{$prefix}/:controller",
    array('action' => 'index', 'prefix' => $prefix, $prefix => true)
);
Router::connect(
    "/{$prefix}/:controller/:action/*",
    array('prefix' => $prefix, $prefix => true)
);

Much like admin routing all prefix actions should be prefixed with the prefix name. So /manager/posts/add would map to PostsController::manager_add().

Additionally, the current prefix will be available from the controller methods through $this->request->prefix

When using prefix routes it's important to remember, using the HTML helper to build your links will help maintain the prefix calls. Here's how to build this link using the HTML helper:

// Go into a prefixed route.
echo $this->Html->link(
    'Manage posts',
    array('manager' => true, 'controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'add')
);

// leave a prefix
echo $this->Html->link(
    'View Post',
    array('manager' => false, 'controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'view', 5)
);

plugin routing

Plugin Routing

Plugin routing uses the plugin key. You can create links that point to a plugin, but adding the plugin key to your URL array:

echo $this->Html->link(
    'New todo',
    array('plugin' => 'todo', 'controller' => 'todo_items', 'action' => 'create')
);

Conversely if the active request is a plugin request and you want to create a link that has no plugin you can do the following:

echo $this->Html->link(
    'New todo',
    array('plugin' => null, 'controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'profile')
);

By setting plugin => null you tell the Router that you want to create a link that is not part of a plugin.

file extensions

File Extensions

To handle different file extensions with your routes, you need one extra line in your routes config file:

Router::parseExtensions('html', 'rss');

This will tell the router to remove any matching file extensions, and then parse what remains.

If you want to create a URL such as /page/title-of-page.html you would create your route as illustrated below:

Router::connect(
    '/page/:title',
    array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'view'),
    array(
        'pass' => array('title')
    )
);

Then to create links which map back to the routes simply use:

$this->Html->link(
    'Link title',
    array(
        'controller' => 'pages',
        'action' => 'view',
        'title' => 'super-article',
        'ext' => 'html'
    )
);

File extensions are used by RequestHandlerComponent to do automatic view switching based on content types. See the RequestHandlerComponent for more information.

Using Additional Conditions When Matching Routes

When creating routes you might want to restrict certain URL's based on specific request/environment settings. A good example of this is Rest routing. You can specify additional conditions in the $defaults argument for Router::connect(). By default CakePHP exposes 3 environment conditions, but you can add more using Custom Route Classes. The built-in options are:

• [type] Only match requests for specific content types.
• [method] Only match requests with specific HTTP verbs.
• [server] Only match when $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] matches the given value.

We'll provide a simple example here of how you can use the [method] option to create a custom RESTful route:

Router::connect(
    "/:controller/:id",
    array("action" => "edit", "[method]" => "PUT"),
    array("id" => "[0-9]+")
);

The above route will only match for PUT requests. Using these conditions, you can create custom REST routing, or other request data dependent information.

passed arguments

Passed Arguments

Passed arguments are additional arguments or path segments that are used when making a request. They are often used to pass parameters to your controller methods. :

http://localhost/calendars/view/recent/mark

In the above example, both recent and mark are passed arguments to CalendarsController::view(). Passed arguments are given to your controllers in three ways. First as arguments to the action method called, and secondly they are available in $this->request->params['pass'] as a numerically indexed array. Lastly there is $this->passedArgs available in the same way as the second one. When using custom routes you can force particular parameters to go into the passed arguments as well.

If you were to visit the previously mentioned URL, and you had a controller action that looked like:

CalendarsController extends AppController {
    public function view($arg1, $arg2) {
        debug(func_get_args());
    }
}

You would get the following output:

Array
(
    [0] => recent
    [1] => mark
)

This same data is also available at $this->request->params['pass'] and $this->passedArgs in your controllers, views, and helpers. The values in the pass array are numerically indexed based on the order they appear in the called URL:

debug($this->request->params['pass']);
debug($this->passedArgs);

Either of the above would output:

Array
(
    [0] => recent
    [1] => mark
)

NOTE

$this->passedArgs may also contain named parameters as a named array mixed with Passed arguments.

When generating URLs, using a routing array you add passed arguments as values without string keys in the array:

array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'view', 5)

Since 5 has a numeric key, it is treated as a passed argument.

named parameters

Named Parameters

You can name parameters and send their values using the URL. A request for /posts/view/title:first/category:general would result in a call to the view() action of the PostsController. In that action, you'd find the values of the title and category parameters inside $this->params['named']. They are also available inside $this->passedArgs. In both cases you can access named parameters using their name as an index. If named parameters are omitted, they will not be set.

NOTE

What is parsed as a named parameter is controlled by Router::connectNamed(). If your named parameters are not reverse routing, or parsing correctly, you will need to inform Router about them.

Some summarizing examples for default routes might prove helpful:

URL to controller action mapping using default routes:

URL: /monkeys/jump
Mapping: MonkeysController->jump();

URL: /products
Mapping: ProductsController->index();

URL: /tasks/view/45
Mapping: TasksController->view(45);

URL: /donations/view/recent/2001
Mapping: DonationsController->view('recent', '2001');

URL: /contents/view/chapter:models/section:associations
Mapping: ContentsController->view();
$this->passedArgs['chapter'] = 'models';
$this->passedArgs['section'] = 'associations';
$this->params['named']['chapter'] = 'models';
$this->params['named']['section'] = 'associations';

When making custom routes, a common pitfall is that using named parameters will break your custom routes. In order to solve this you should inform the Router about which parameters are intended to be named parameters. Without this knowledge the Router is unable to determine whether named parameters are intended to actually be named parameters or routed parameters, and defaults to assuming you intended them to be routed parameters. To connect named parameters in the router use Router::connectNamed():

Router::connectNamed(array('chapter', 'section'));

Will ensure that your chapter and section parameters reverse route correctly.

When generating URLs, using a routing array you add named parameters as values with string keys matching the name:

array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'view', 'chapter' => 'association')

Since 'chapter' doesn't match any defined route elements, it's treated as a named parameter.

NOTE

Both named parameters and route elements share the same key-space. It's best to avoid re-using a key for both a route element and a named parameter.

Named parameters also support using arrays to generate and parse URLs. The syntax works very similar to the array syntax used for GET parameters. When generating URLs you can use the following syntax:

$url = Router::url(array(
    'controller' => 'posts',
    'action' => 'index',
    'filter' => array(
        'published' => 1,
        'frontpage' => 1
    )
));

The above would generate the URL /posts/index/filter[published]:1/filter[frontpage]:1. The parameters are then parsed and stored in your controller's passedArgs variable as an array, just as you sent them to Router::url:

$this->passedArgs['filter'] = array(
    'published' => 1,
    'frontpage' => 1
);

Arrays can be deeply nested as well, allowing you even more flexibility in passing arguments:

$url = Router::url(array(
    'controller' => 'posts',
    'action' => 'search',
    'models' => array(
        'post' => array(
            'order' => 'asc',
            'filter' => array(
                'published' => 1
            )
        ),
        'comment' => array(
            'order' => 'desc',
            'filter' => array(
                'spam' => 0
            )
        ),
    ),
    'users' => array(1, 2, 3)
));

You would end up with a pretty long url like this (wrapped for easy reading):

posts/search
  /models[post][order]:asc/models[post][filter][published]:1
  /models[comment][order]:desc/models[comment][filter][spam]:0
  /users[]:1/users[]:2/users[]:3

And the resulting array that would be passed to the controller would match that which you passed to the router:

$this->passedArgs['models'] = array(
    'post' => array(
        'order' => 'asc',
        'filter' => array(
            'published' => 1
        )
    ),
    'comment' => array(
        'order' => 'desc',
        'filter' => array(
            'spam' => 0
        )
    ),
);

Controlling Named Parameters

You can control named parameter configuration at the per-route-level or control them globally. Global control is done through Router::connectNamed() The following gives some examples of how you can control named parameter parsing with connectNamed().

Do not parse any named parameters:

Router::connectNamed(false);

Parse only default parameters used for CakePHP's pagination:

Router::connectNamed(false, array('default' => true));

Parse only the page parameter if its value is a number:

Router::connectNamed(
    array('page' => '[\d]+'),
    array('default' => false, 'greedy' => false)
);

Parse only the page parameter no matter what:

Router::connectNamed(
    array('page'),
    array('default' => false, 'greedy' => false)
);

Parse only the page parameter if the current action is 'index':

Router::connectNamed(
    array('page' => array('action' => 'index')),
    array('default' => false, 'greedy' => false)
);

Parse only the page parameter if the current action is 'index' and the controller is 'pages':

Router::connectNamed(
    array('page' => array('action' => 'index', 'controller' => 'pages')),
    array('default' => false, 'greedy' => false)
);

connectNamed() supports a number of options:

• greedy Setting this to true will make Router parse all named params. Setting it to false will parse only the connected named params.
• default Set this to true to merge in the default set of named parameters.
• reset Set to true to clear existing rules and start fresh.
• separator Change the string used to separate the key & value in a named parameter. Defaults to :

Reverse Routing

Reverse routing is a feature in CakePHP that is used to allow you to easily change your URL structure without having to modify all your code. By using routing arrays <routing array> to define your URLs, you can later configure routes and the generated URLs will automatically update.

If you create URLs using strings like:

$this->Html->link('View', '/posts/view/' . $id);

And then later decide that /posts should really be called 'articles' instead, you would have to go through your entire application renaming URLs. However, if you defined your link like:

$this->Html->link(
    'View',
    array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'view', $id)
);

Then when you decided to change your URLs, you could do so by defining a route. This would change both the incoming URL mapping, as well as the generated URLs.

When using array URLs, you can define both query string parameters and document fragments using special keys:

Router::url(array(
    'controller' => 'posts',
    'action' => 'index',
    '?' => array('page' => 1),
    '#' => 'top'
));

// will generate a URL like.
/posts/index?page=1#top

Redirect Routing

Redirect routing allows you to issue HTTP status 30x redirects for incoming routes, and point them at different URLs. This is useful when you want to inform client applications that a resource has moved and you don't want to expose two URLs for the same content

Redirection routes are different from normal routes as they perform an actual header redirection if a match is found. The redirection can occur to a destination within your application or an outside location:

Router::redirect(
    '/home/*',
    array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'view'),
    // or array('persist'=>array('id')) for default routing where the
    // view action expects $id as an argument
    array('persist' => true)
);

Redirects /home/* to /posts/view and passes the parameters to /posts/view. Using an array as the redirect destination allows you to use other routes to define where a URL string should be redirected to. You can redirect to external locations using string URLs as the destination:

Router::redirect('/posts/*', 'https://google.com', array('status' => 302));

This would redirect /posts/* to https://google.com with a HTTP status of 302.

Disabling the Default Routes

If you have fully customized all your routes, and want to avoid any possible duplicate content penalties from search engines, you can remove the default routes that CakePHP offers by deleting them from your application's routes.php file.

This will cause CakePHP to serve errors, when users try to visit URLs that would normally be provided by CakePHP but have not been connected explicitly.

Custom Route Classes

Custom route classes allow you to extend and change how individual routes parse requests and handle reverse routing. A custom route class should be created in app/Routing/Route and should extend CakeRoute and implement one or both of match() and/or parse(). parse() is used to parse requests and match() is used to handle reverse routing.

You can use a custom route class when making a route by using the routeClass option, and loading the file containing your route before trying to use it:

App::uses('SlugRoute', 'Routing/Route');

Router::connect(
     '/:slug',
     array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'view'),
     array('routeClass' => 'SlugRoute')
);

This route would create an instance of SlugRoute and allow you to implement custom parameter handling.

Router API

class Router

class CakeRoute

method CakeRoute::parse($url)

method CakeRoute::match($url)

method CakeRoute::compile()