Yii Routes and URL Generation: Quick Explanation and Examples

Routing is very important on any web framework and this is also true on Yii. Apart from configuring the actual routes in your main.php config file, you'll probably use Yii::app()->createUrl() many, many times on your app.

Here is a small reminder on the basic stuff you need to know about routes on Yii.

Sample main.php config file showing routes

<?php
// previous lines ignored
'urlManager' => array(
    'urlFormat' => 'path',
    'showScriptName' => false,
    'rules' => array(
        // specific rules
        // route => controller/action 
        'departments/<id:\d+>/add_employee>' => 'departments/addEmployee',
        'employees/<id:\d+>/add_to_department/<department_name:\w+>' => 'employees/addToDepartment',   

        // catch-all rules
        // this file is read in order so it only matches if no other rules
        // above have matched
        '<controller:\w+>' => '<controller>/index',
        '<controller:\w+>/<id:\d+>' => '<controller>/view',
        '<controller:\w+>/<id:\d+>/<action:\w+>' => '<controller>/<action>'
    )
),

URL to Controller Action

The specific rules mean the following to Yii:

• If you receive a request that matches the left-hand side, this is what Yii will do:

  • 'departments/5/add_employee' will cause function actionAddEmployee(5)to will be called in DepartmentsController, so you should have a function like this:

   <?php
   class DepartmentsController extends Controller{
  
   // previous lines ignored
   public function actionAddEmployee($id){
       // stuff...
   }
   // other methods
  

  • 'employees/15/add_to_department/sales' will cause function actionAddToDepartment(15,'sales') to be called in EmployeesController or, in other words:

   <?php
   class EmployeesController extends Controller{
  
   // previous lines ignored
   public function actionAddToDepartment($id,$department_name){
       // stuff
   }
   // other methods
  

This is how you generate a method call from a url. But how do you generate an url from a controller action?

Controller Action to URL

To generate a url from a controller/action route (for example, for links) you'll probably use Yii::app()->createUrl($route, $params). It takes a route (String) and parameters (Array), like this:

<?php

$url = Yii::app()->createUrl('departments/addEmployee', array('id' => 10));
// $url equals "/departments/10/add_employee"

$url2 = Yii::app()->createUrl('employees/addToDepartment',array('id' => 34, 'department_name' => 'marketing'));
// $url2 equals "/employees/34/add_to_department/marketing"