When writing very complex multi-function Special Pages (almost all of our internal tools are built as special pages) it gets kind of unwieldy with the special page class that just has a single execute() function and the redundant boilerplate to define ajax functions etc. Since most of our front end is javascript now and we sometimes want templates/html or json data from the same controllers, we have a 1:1 mapping between methods and templates and every controller method is automatically an ajax function that can return json or html. The front end can call ANY back end method and ask for json data or the html with the data applied to it. When the Controller gets “too unwieldy” (the threshold for this depends on the developer) we generally refactor them into a single Controller and a set of Helper classes so that we retain the same external end points, just moving the code around.
Here’s an example of that:
On every content page, there’s a right rail module that shows the latest photos uploaded to the wiki:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Nikola_Tesla_and_You_(Fallout_3)
on the back end, that’s entirely self contained in this LatestPhotosController which is dropped into the skin with a render() function. However, the data that it generates can be used in other places:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wikia.php?controller=LatestPhotos (call controller, combine data with html and return it) http://fallout.wikia.com/wikia.php?controller=LatestPhotos&format=json (call controller, just return the data that would have been in the template)
The default method is executeIndex() and the default template is <controller>_Index. Here’s the controller code:
https://github.com/Wikia/app/blob/dev/skins/oasis/modules/LatestPhotosContro...
And the template:
https://github.com/Wikia/app/blob/dev/skins/oasis/modules/templates/LatestPh...
Hope that helps provide a bit more context for how this is actually used in the application.
This is very cool, Owen. Once we have a templating engine picked out, conventions like this make life easier.