Manage Controllers

Create Controller

You can simply create a new controller for an existing app by:

It will prompt you for some required arguments.

As an example, here we will create a controller called Index for an existing app called notes:

It will create the new controller for you, and also updates the _controllers.py module of the selected app.

• The Controller Name must be in "CamelCase" form with at least two "a-z" and "A-Z" characters.
• Valid characters for Controller URL are: a-z, 0-9, -, /, <, :, >
• Valid Methods are: post, get, put, delete

You will learn more about these methods at RESTFUL CRUD Methods section.

Here are some examples for valid Controller URLs:

Do

Don't

The framework considers this URL as /notes/notes/index/, which doesn't exists!

Do not add the App URL to the Controller URL. It will be handled by the framework.

Generic URLs

You can also create generic URLs using the following data types:

Using Controllers

Here's the controller class we created in the previous chapter of this section:

# Dependencies
from aurora import Controller, View

# The controller class
class Index(Controller):
    
    # POST Method
    def post(self):
        pass

    # GET Method
    def get(self):
        return 'Page content...'

It is the blueprint of your controller created by the Aurora framework.

On the first line it imports the Controller, and View classes of Aurora framework.

The current controller inherits the Controller class, with the given methods.

If you need __init__ magic method, please do not inherit the parent class:

Don't

...
class Index(Controller):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
...

Using the code above allows the users access to all methods of the parent class in the current controller. For this specific example even to PUT and DELETE. This is something that you don't want.

You can still use all magic methods for this class. Only remember, not inherit the parent class in the constructor method of the current class:

Do

...
class Index(Controller):
    def __init__(self):
        # TODO
...

However, it is possible to import the Flask request method and handle the methods manually, but this is useless and doesn't make any sense:

Don't

from flask import request
...
class Index(Controller):
    ...
    def post(self):
        if request.method == 'POST':
            # TODO
        else:
            # TODO
...

Do

...
class Index(Controller):
    ...
    def post(self):
        # TODO 
...

If a user tries to access a Controller class with a method that is not defined, the errors app will handle it with a 405 forbidden method, and you don't need to do anything.

Here we returned a simple text in the GET method of the current controller.

You can use the View class to return rendered HTML to the browser:

...
class Index(Controller):
    ...
    def get(self):
        return View("index")
...

It will try to render a view template called index.html in the /views/notes/ directory (which doesn't exist yet).

Note that you don't need to provide the .html for the view, only the view name is enough.

Modifying Controllers

If you already created a controller for an existing app and want to modify it, you should do it manually in the _controllers.py module of the desired app.

For the notes app here's how it looks like:

# Dependencies
from aurora.helpers import controller

# Controllers routes
controllers = [
    controller(name='Index', url='', methods=['GET', 'POST']),
]#do-not-change-me

For example, you can remove the post method:

...
    controller(name='Index', url='', methods=['GET']),
...

Then, you also need to remove the post method from the Index controller of the notes app:

# Dependencies
from aurora import Controller, View

# The controller class
class Index(Controller):

    # GET Method
    def get(self):
        return 'Page content...'

You can do the same for GET, PUT, and DELETE methods.

You can also add a method. Only remember to update both _controllers.py and Controller modules for the current app.

If you want to use a controller more than once, you cannot use the create-controller, because it considers the requested controller as an existing one and gives you an error message.

However, it's possible to add it manually in the _controllers.py module:

...
    controller(name='Greet', url='greet'),
    controller(name='Greet', url='greet/<str:name>'),
...

Delete Controller

You can simply delete an existing controller for an existing app by:

It prompts you for App Name and Controller Name. After confirmation of the data loss, it will delete your controller permanently.