Constructor in custom controller?

Question

I'm implementing a custom controller as part of a plugin I'm building. There's some set up work that I'd like to do in the controller's constructor. I created a __construct method, and it seems to work as expected.

My question: Is there some reason that I should call parent::__construct() inside of the constructor? It requires an argument, which looks like it should be an ID of some sort, but I'm not sure where I should get that.

Answer 1

I'm not a huge fan of it but for this situation it might be more appropriate to use init(), Looking at Craft\BaseController:

/**
 * Initializes the controller.  This method is called by the Craft before the controller starts to execute.
 *
 * @throws HttpException
 * @return null
 */
public function init()
{

}

It seems a little odd to me to have a constructor for a controller though, what is it you're doing in it? Yii's Controller filters might be a better fit.

Answer 2

\Craft\BaseController extends \CController so if you want to have a custom constructor, you should accept the same parameters and call the parent constructor with them.

/**
 * @param string $id id of this controller
 * @param CWebModule $module the module that this controller belongs to.
 */
public function __construct($id, $module = null)
{
    parent::__construct($id, $module);
}