Direct access to controller

Question

I'm trying to create a plugin with a controller, but I don't want to render any view but run a script from a cronjob. I can't get into the controller with an url and I'm not sure why.

I already tried everything here but it does not state any way to directly call a controller with an url. Is this possible?

Answer 1

As that page in the docs says, dedicated controller action URLs will look like:

http://example.com/actions/pluginHandle/actionName

If your plugin’s name is “CocktailRecipes”, and you have a controller located at plugins/cocktailrecipes/controllers/CocktailRecipesController.php, and within that you have a function called actionSaveIngredient(), you would get to that via:

http://example.com/actions/cocktailRecipes/saveIngredient

If your controller is actually called CocktailRecipes_IngredientsController.php, it would be this instead:

http://example.com/actions/cocktailRecipes/ingredients/saveIngredient

Your plugin can also register a route (either CP-facing or site-facing) which could provide a cleaner endpoint for the controller:

public function registerSiteRoutes()
{
    return array(
        'saveIngredient' => array('action' => 'cocktailRecipes/ingredients/saveIngredient'),
    );
}

If you had that in place, you’d be able to access CocktailRecipes_IngredientsController’s actionSaveIngredients() like this instead:

http://example.com/saveIngredient

Note: I don’t recommend trying to create a route for your controller until you’ve figured out how to get a basic action URL to point to it correctly. No need to add another step of complexity while you’re still troubleshooting.

Answer 2

The docs explain how to generate links to controller actions. Assuming your action trigger is "actions" (as it is by default) then your URL will look as follows:

http://www.domain.com/actions/pluginName/controllerName/actionName

Following the first example in the docs, the URL will look as follows:

http://www.domain.com/actions/cocktailRecipes/ingredients/deleteIngredient

Be sure to allow anonymous access to your controller action so it can be reached by the cron job.