How do you prefer to break a route?

The CMS Questions
1

When I should kill a route from continuing, what is the correct way to break it?

Example:

Instead of an else statment, in this case I use die; to just kill it off:

kirby()->routes(array(
  array(
    'pattern' => 'test',
    'action'  => function() {
      if(1==1) {
        echo 'Do something';
        die;
      }

      echo 'Do something else';
    }
));

In this particular example I would probably use else in real life

As far as I know there are these ways to break a route:

die;
exit;
return false;
return null;
return;

Which do you prefer and why? I think I prefer die; because then I know nothing will run after that.

2

Normally an HTTP request is initiated by a client that expects a response back. For that reason I prefer to return an HTTP response with proper status code even in cases I don’t really need one:

return new Response("You can't access this page.", 'html', 403);

For JSON responses Kirby offers some aliases:

return response::success($message, $data = [], $code = 200);

// or

return response::error($message, $code = 400, $data = []);

When you return a response nothing after it gets executed.

3

For this case I think the first example is brilliant! :slight_smile: In fact it does 3 things in one row. It give an error message, setting the content type and setting a status code. It also seems to be an undocumented feature?

Looking at the docs https://getkirby.com/docs/developer-guide/advanced/routing, it says to stop the app, use return false;.

Maybe make the response class official and add this instead of return false; to the routes page in the docs?

Update

I’ve also updated https://github.com/jenstornell/kirby-secrets/wiki/Advanced-routes with this new information.

If there is a need to style the message, it’s also possible to use a snippet:

return new Response(snippet('error-message', [], true), 'html', 404);
4

The response class is actually used in another example in those docs:

Returning a response object

function() {
  return response::json(array(
    'some', 'json', 'stuff'
  ));
}

But yes, the docs could certainly be extended with some more examples.

5

Yes, I saw that. :slight_smile: The @pedroborges alternative syntax (alternative facts ;)) is not a singleton call and it’s setting an error message so there is a difference. So yes, I think yet another example would not hurt.

But you (and the other crew) are really good at docs in general. It’s really hard to find “doc holes”. :slight_smile:

6

It’s documented only on the Toolkit section: https://getkirby.com/docs/toolkit/api#response

The best resource for me to learn how to use classes like this has been reading Kirby’s core and panel code. Lot’s of hidden gems in there :heart:

7

Yes, that often helps a lot.