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. Our controller methods at a minimum should look like:

def show(self):
    pass

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

Container Resolving

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

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

or by specifying them in the constructor:

class DashboardController:

    def __init__(self, Request):
        self.request = Request

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

If you need a class in multiple controller methods then it is recommended to put it into the contructor in order to keep the controller DRY.

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.