How can I implement advanced action routes (in routes.php)?

Question

We want to mask specific action routes in our project's routes.php file. Currently what we have looks like this:

return array(
    // /actions/api/element/section/name/{$name}/
    'api/test/(?P<name>)'  => ['action' => 'api/element/section'],
);

We would like to pass name into the action array somehow. Is there something documented or undocumented that I'm missing? Or is what I'm attempting not possible at this time?

Answer 1

Yes it’s possible. First you will need to update your route key so that you’re capturing the name parameter with a valid named subpattern. (You were close, but missing the actual pattern part of it).

return array(
    'api/test/(?P<name>[^\/]+)' => ['action' => 'api/element/section'],
);

Any named subpattern matches in your route will be passed to your controller action’s $variables argument, if it has one.

class Api_ElementController extends BaseController
{
    // ...

    public function actionSection(array $variables = array())
    {
        $name = $variables['name'];

        // ...
    }
}

Note that you specifically need to call the argument “$variables”, and you need to typeset it to an array for this to work.