CakePHP - How to make routes with custom parameters?

Question

My Cake URL is like this:

$token = '9KJHF8k104ZX43';

$url = array(
    'controller' => 'users',
    'action' => 'password_reset',
    'prefix' => 'admin',
    'admin' => true,
    $token
)

I would like this to route to a prettier URL like:

/admin/password-reset/9KJHF8k104ZX43

However, I would like the token at the end to be optional, so that in the event that someone doesn't provide a token it is still routed to:

/admin/password-reset

So that I can catch this case and redirect to another page or display a message.

I've read the book on routing a lot and I still don't feel like it explains the complex cases properly in a way that I fully understand, so I don't really know where to go with this. Something like:

Router::connect('/admin/password-reset/:token', array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'password_reset', 'prefix' => 'admin', 'admin' => true));

I don't really know how to optionally catch the token and pass it to the URL.

Answer 1

You'll want to use named parameters. For an example from one of my projects

Router::connect('/:type/:slug', 
        array('controller' => 'catalogs', 'action' => 'view'), 
        array(
            'type' => '(type|compare)', // regex to match correct tokens
            'slug' => '[a-z0-9-]+', // regex again to ensure a valid slug or 404
            'pass' => array(
                'slug', // I just want to pass through slug to my controller
            )
        ));

Then, in my view I can make a link which will pass the slug through.

echo $this->Html->link('My Link', array('controller' => 'catalogs', 'action' => 'view', 'type' => $catalog['CatalogType']['slug'], 'slug' => $catalog['Catalog']['slug']));

My controller action looks like this,

public function view($slug) {
    // etc
}