CastRoute

CastRoute decorates and extends FastRoute to add:

• route generation (aka reverse routing)
• automated casting of route variables to specified types
• a data structure for dumping routes

The first is an often-repeated feature request for FastRoute; the second and third are replicas of functionality found in AutoRoute, but without using reflection as AutoRoute does.

CastRoute is not quite a drop-in replacement for FastRoute, because it uses a different approach to instantiating the dispatcher, but other than that it is identical to FastRoute. All pre-existing route definitions and dispatch handling will work without modification.

Getting Started

Route Definition

Instead of calling \FastRoute\simpleDispatcher() or \FastRoute\cachedDispatcher(), use the CastRoute container object to collect routes. Your existing route collector callable for FastRoute will continue to work as-is when you pass it via the $routes parameter.

use CastRoute\CastRoute;

$castRoute = new CastRoute(
    routes: function ($r) {
        $r->addRoute('GET', '/users', 'get_all_users_handler');
        $r->addRoute('GET', '/user/{id:\d+}', 'get_user_handler');
        $r->addRoute('GET', '/articles/{id:\d+}[/{title}]', 'get_article_handler');
    }),
);

CastRoute adds the ability to specify variable types in the route itself. For example, the route variables above might be specified like this instead (note that :\d+ has been replaced by :int):

use CastRoute\CastRoute;

$castRoute = new CastRoute(
    routes: function ($r) {
        $r->addRoute('GET', '/users', 'get_all_users_handler');
        $r->addRoute('GET', '/user/{id:int}', 'get_user_handler');
        $r->addRoute('GET', '/articles/{id:int}[/{title}]', 'get_article_handler');
    }),
);

CastRoute supports these variable types (matching these regexes) by default:

• array: [^/]+
• bool: 0|f|false|n|no|1|t|true|y|yes
• float: \d+\.?\d+
• int: \d+
• string: [^/]+

Variables specified in this way will be recast at dispatch() time via an instance of CastRouteVariables:

• array values are converted using str_getcsv()
• bool values are cast to boolval()
• float values are cast to floatval()
• int values are cast to intval()

All other values remain as strings.

You can create your own variable type regexes and casting/conversion by extending CastRouteVariables; see below for more information.

Route Dispatching

Dispatching to get back route information is the same as with FastRoute. First get the dispatcher from the CastRoute container, then work with it just as you would with FastRoute. The following example is taken directly from the FastRoute documentation:

$dispatcher = $castRoute->getDispatcher();

// Fetch method and URI from somewhere
$httpMethod = $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'];
$uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

// Strip query string (?foo=bar) and decode URI
if (false !== $pos = strpos($uri, '?')) {
    $uri = substr($uri, 0, $pos);
}

$uri = rawurldecode($uri);

$routeInfo = $dispatcher->dispatch($httpMethod, $uri);
switch ($routeInfo[0]) {
    case FastRoute\Dispatcher::NOT_FOUND:
        // ... 404 Not Found
        break;
    case FastRoute\Dispatcher::METHOD_NOT_ALLOWED:
        $allowedMethods = $routeInfo[1];
        // ... 405 Method Not Allowed
        break;
    case FastRoute\Dispatcher::FOUND:
        $handler = $routeInfo[1];
        $vars = $routeInfo[2];
        // ... call $handler with $vars
        break;
}

Route Generation

If a route handler specification is a string, you can generate a route path using that handler name. (Route handlers that are not strings cannot be used with route generation.)

To generate a route, get the CastRouteGenerator out of the CastRoute container, then call generate() with the handler string and the variables to interpolate into the path:

$generator = $castRoute->getGenerator();

$path = $generator->generate('get_article_handler', [
    'id' => '88',
    'title' => 'the-article-slug'
]);

assert($path === '/articles/88/the-article-slug');

Route Dumping

CastRoute maintains a data structure of all routes with their HTTP methods, paths, and handlers.

To dump this data structure and see all the routes, get the CastRouteHandler object from the CastRoute container, and call its getUrls() method. You can then use that data structure to print out a dump of all routes. For example, this script ...

// define routes
$castRoute = new CastRoute(
    routes: function ($r) {
        // user
        $r->addRoute('GET', '/user/{id:int}', 'GetUserAction');
        $r->patch('/user/{id:int}', 'EditUserAction');
        $r->post('/user', 'PostUserAction');

        // article
        $r->get('/article/{id:int}', 'GetArticleAction');
        $r->post('/article', 'PostArticleAction');
        $r->patch('/article/{id:int}', 'PatchArticleAction');
    },
);

// dump routes
$urls = $castRoute->getRouteHandlers()->getUrls();

foreach ($urls as $path => $methodHandler) {
    echo $path . PHP_EOL;
    foreach ($methodHandler as $method => $handler) {
        echo "    {$method}: {$handler}" . PHP_EOL;
    }
    echo PHP_EOL;
}

... will generate output that looks something like this:

/article
    POST: PostArticleAction

/article/{id:int}
    GET: GetArticleAction
    HEAD: GetArticleAction
    PATCH: PatchArticleAction

/user
    POST: PostUserAction

/user/{id:int}
    GET: GetUserAction
    HEAD: GetUserAction
    PATCH: EditUserAction

Customizing CastRoute

Construction Options

Whereas FastRoute uses an $options array, the CastRoute container uses separate constructor parameters with the same names as the FastRoute $options array keys:

• string $routeParser = \FastRoute\RouteParser\Std::class: an alternative RouteParser implementation
• string $dataGenerator = \FastRoute\DataGenerator\GroupCountBased::class: an alternative DataGenerator implementation
• string $dispatcher = \FastRoute\Dispatcher\GroupCountBased::class: an alternative Dispatcher implementation; this will be decorated by the CastRouteDispatcher instance
• ?string $cacheFile = null: The path to the cache file. When null, caching is not used.
• bool $cacheDisabled = false: When true, caching will not be used, even when a $cacheFile has been specified.

CastRoute adds two more options:

• string $routeCollector = \CastRoute\CastRouteCollector::class: an alternative CastRouteCollector implementation
• string $routeVariables = \CastRoute\CastRouteVariables::class: an alternative CastRouteVariables implementation

Extending CastRouteCollector

You may wish to extend CastRouteCollector to implement convenience methods. For example, the following implementation adds a map() method that automatically picks up the $httpMethod from the handler class name:

class CustomRouteCollector extends CastRouteCollector
{
    public function map(string $route, string $handlerClass) : void
    {
        $parts = explode('\\', $handlerClass);
        preg_match('/^([A-Z][a-z]+).*/', end($parts), $matches);
        $this->addRoute(strtoupper($matches[1]), $route, $handlerClass);
    }
}

You can then use your alternative route collector when instantiating the CastRoute container:

use CastRoute\CastRoute;
use CustomRouteCollector;

$castRoute = new CastRoute(
    routeCollector: CustomRouteCollector::class,
    routes: function (CustomRouteCollector $r) {
        $r->map('/user/{id:int}', GetUserAction::class);
    }),
);

Extending CastRouteVariables

You may wish to extend CastRouteVariables to implement additional variable type regexes and casting/conversion. For example, the following implementation adds a uuid type regex and corresponding uuid() conversion method:

use Ramsey\Uuid\Uuid;

class CustomRouteVariables extends CastRouteVariables
{
    protected function modTypes() : array
    {
        return [
            'uuid' => '[0-9A-Fa-f]{8}-[0-9A-Fa-f]{4}-[0-9A-Fa-f]{4}-[0-9A-Fa-f]{4}-[0-9A-Fa-f]{12}',
        ];
    }

    public function uuid(string $value) : Uuid
    {
        return Uuid::fromString($value);
    }
}

You can now use a uuid type in your route definitions ...

use CastRoute\CastRoute;
use CustomRouteVariables;

$castRoute = new CastRoute(
    routeVariables: CustomRouteVariables::class,
    routes: function ($r) {
        $r->get('/resource/{resourceId:uuid}');
    },
);

... and on dispatch() the returned resourceId variable will be a Uuid object.

Implementation notes:

• Override modTypes() to return an array of 'type' => 'regex'; these will combined into the default types using array_replace().

• The type name doubles as a method name; the method must take a string $value parameter, and may return anything. If there is no method for the type name, the $value will remain a string; this allows you to specify named regexes without converting the string.