Controllers

Introduction

Controllers are a vital part of Masonite and is mainly what differs it from other Python frameworks that implement the MVC structure differently. Controllers are simply classes with methods. These methods take a self parameter which is the normal self that Python class methods require. Controller methods can be looked at as function based views if you are coming from Django as they are simply methods inside a class and work in similar ways.

Controllers have an added benefit over straight function based views as the developer has access to to a full class they can manipulate however they want. In other words, controller methods may utilize class attributes or private methods to break up logic. They provide a lot of flexibility.

Creating a Controller

Its very easy to create a controller with Masonite with the help of our craft command tool. We can simply create a new file inside app/http/controllers, name the class the same name as the file and then create a class with methods. We can also use the craft controller command to do all of that for us which is:

$ craft controller Dashboard

When we run this command we now have a new class in app/http/controllers/DashboardController.py called DashboardController. By convention, Masonite expects that all controllers have their own file since it’s an extremely easy way to keep track of all your classes since the class name is the same name as the file but you can obviously name this class wherever you like.

Exact Controllers

Remember that Masonite will automatically append Controller to the end of all controllers. If you want to create the exact name of the controller then you can pass a -e or --exact flag.

$ craft controller Dashboard -e

or

$ craft controller Dashboard --exact

This will create a Dashboard controller located in app/http/controllers/Dashboard.py

Resource Controllers

Resource controllers are controllers that have basic CRUD / resource style methods to them such as create, update, show, store etc. We can create a resource controller by running:

$ craft controller Dashboard -r

or

$ craft controller Dashboard --resource

this will create a controller that looks like:

''' A Module Description '''

class DashboardController: 
 ''' Class Docstring Description '''
 
    def show(self): 
        pass
        
    def index(self): 
        pass
        
    def create(self): 
        pass
        
    def store(self): 
        pass
        
    def edit(self): 
        pass
        
    def update(self): 
        pass
    
    def destroy(self): 
        pass

Defining a Controller Method

Controller methods are very similar to function based views in a Django application except this is just a normal class method. Our controller methods at a minimum should look like:

def show(self):
    pass

All controller methods must have the self parameter. The self parameter is the normal python self object which is just an instance of the current class as usual. Nothing special here.

All controller methods are resolved by the container so you may also retrieve additional objects from the container by specifying them as a parameter:

def show(self, Request):
    print(Request) # Grabbed the Request object from the container

It’s important to note that unlike other frameworks, we do not have to specify our route parameters as parameters in our controller method. We can retrieve the parameters using the Request.param('key') class method.