Controllers

• Creating Controllers
• Using Controllers

To actually handle a request, you need to set a handler for when it matches one of your routes. While closure is a quick way to do it, it becomes messy once your handling logic becomes more complex. In such situations, you need a place to put and organize your logic. Controllers are where you do exactly that.

Controllers are an integral part of an Alpas web app and go hand-in-hand with routing.

Not just for organizing your handler logic, controllers also come with some handy helper functions—such as flash, queue, etc. to make it easier to handle an incoming call.

/tip/ All your app controllers are stored under controllers folder by default. You can organize your controllers in subfolders. We highly recommend that you do so.

Creating Controllers

You can manually create a controller by creating a class that extends dev.alpas.routing.Controller class. Or you can use alpas make:controller Alpas command to create one or multiple controllers in one shot.

# creates AdminController.kt file under controllers/admin folder
$ alpas make:controller admin/AdminController

# creates DocsController.kt and HomeController.kt files under controllers folder
$ alpas make:controller DocsController HomeController

class DocsController : Controller() {
    fun show(call: HttpCall) {
        call.reply("Hello, Visitor!")
    }
}

Using Controllers

When referring a controller from your router, you should never create an instance of it directly and should only refer it as a KClass.

fun Router.addRoutes() {
    get("/docs", DocsController::class, "show")
}

All the controller's route handler methods receive an HttpContext object as an argument.