Silex, mount multiple controller providers with closures

Question

I'm trying out Silex and I'm having a bit of a problem, or I might say, more of an inconvenience...

I'm trying to load 2 routes from 2 separate yaml files, but for some reason the mounting ($app->mount(...)) doesn't work with closures.

Here's some code:

// load configuration
$loader->load('core.yml');
$loader->load('api.yml');


function bla($app, $container, $key) {
    $myApp = $app['controllers_factory'];

    foreach ($container->getExtensionConfig('routes')[$key] as $name => $route) {
        $controller = $myApp->match($route['pattern'], $route['controller']);
        $controller->method($route['requirements']['_method']);
        $controller->bind($name);
    }
    return $myApp;
}

$app->mount('/core', bla($app, $container, 0));
$app->mount('/api', bla($app, $container, 1));

This works.

What doesn't work is if I do the exact same thing with closures, like this:

$app->mount('/core', function ($app, $container, $key) {
    return $app['controllers_factory'];
});

Gives the following error:

LogicException: The "mount" method takes either a ControllerCollection or a ControllerProviderInterface instance.

But

var_dump($app['controllers_factory']);

spits out an object of type Silex\ControllerCollection.

I'm obviously missing something.

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

The problem

In your first example, you're mounting the result of a function. In your second example, you're mounting the function itself.

Function bla() returns the controller collection when it's called. When you do

$app->mount('/core', bla($app, $container, 0));

the function is executed first and then the returned ControllerCollection is mounted.

But when you do

$app->mount('/core', function ($app, $container, $key) {...});

the function is not executed. It is treated as an object and mounted. Since the function itstelf is not a ControllerCollection or a ControllerProviderInterface, you get the error.

Two alternatives

Use PHP routing

This is how I like to do it. I don't know if this is "the Silex way", but it works well for me.

You mount each controller collection like so:

$app->mount('/core', include 'controllers/core.php');
$app->mount('/api', include 'controllers/api.php');

Each controller collection goes in a separate file in the controllers folder. So api.php might look like this:

$controllers = $app['controllers_factory'];

$controllers->get('/version', function() use ($app) {
  // do whatever you want
  return 'version 1.2';
});

return $controllers;

There may even be a way of doing this using the YML loader and keeping your routes in yml files, but I don't like mixing yml and php in general. Why use two technologies when you can just use one.

A fancier way

Take a look at this article. His technique is way more elegant than mine, but also more complicated. It's probably better for larger projects. Maybe it will work better for you.