Symfony controllers & routing

Read the Symfony documentation on Controllers and Routing.

Controllers are located in src/PrestaShopBundle/Controller/Admin folder. They are organized in sub-folders following the Back Office menu. For instance, the TaxController is located in src/PrestaShop/Controller/Admin/Improve/International. Same applies to Improve, Sell sections etc.

This is how the directory tree of controllers should look like:

Controller/
└── Admin
    ├── Configure
    │   ├── AdvancedParameters
    │   └── ShopParameters
    ├── Improve
    │   ├── Design
    │   ├── International
    │   ├── Modules
    │   ├── Payment
    │   └── Shipping
    └── Sell
        ├── Catalog
        ├── Customers
        ├── CustomerService
        ├── Orders
        └── Stats

Symfony Controllers should be thin by default and have only one responsibility: getting the HTTP Request from the client and returning an HTTP Response. This means that every business logic should be placed in dedicated classes outside the Controller:

  • Form management
  • Database access
  • Validation
  • etc…

You can take a look at PerformanceController for an example of good implementation, and ProductController for something you should avoid at all costs.

Never, ever call the legacy controller inside the new controller. It’s a no go, no matter the reason!

Controllers are responsible for performing “Actions”. Actions are methods of Controllers which mapped to a route, and that return a Response. Regarding the rendering of a Response, there is some data specific to PrestaShop (in Back Office) that we must set for every action:

Attribute Type Description
layoutHeaderToolbarBtn [[‘href’, ‘des’,‘icon’], …] Set buttons in toolbar on top of the page
layoutTitle string Main title of the page
requireAddonsSearch boolean If true, display addons recommendations button
requireBulkActions boolean If true, display bulk actions button
showContentHeader boolean If true, display the page header
enableSidebar boolean If true, display a sidebar
help_link string Set the url of “Help” button
requireFilterStatus boolean ??? (Specific to Modules page?)
level integer Level of authorization for actions (Specific to modules)

Controller Helpers

Some helpers are specific to PrestaShop to help you manage the security and the dispatching of legacy hooks, all of them are directly available in Controllers that extends FrameworkBundleAdminController.

  • isDemoModeEnabled(): some actions should not be allowed in Demonstration Mode
  • getDemoErrorMessage(): returns a specific error message
  • addFlash(type, msg): accepts “success|error” and a message that will be displayed after redirection of the page
  • flashErrors([msgs]): if you need to “flash” a collection of errors
  • dispatchHook(hookName, [params]): some legacy hooks need to be dispatched to preserve backward compatibility
  • authorizationLevel(controllerName): check if you are allowed - as connected user - to do the related actions
  • langToLocale($lang): get the locale from a PrestaShop lang
  • trans(key, domain, [params]): translate a string
  • redirectToDefaultPage(): redirect the user to the configurated default page
  • presentGrid(GridInterface $grid): returns an instance of Grid view
  • getCommandBus: returns the Command bus
  • getQueryBus: returns the Query bus

Security

In modern pages, the permissions system that checks if a user is allowed to do CRUD actions has been improved.

PrestaShop allows merchants to choose which actions (like CREATE, READ, UPDATE, DELETE) can be done by each user profile on each resource (like “Product”, “User”). In PrestaShop Back Office, most of these resources are managed by only one Controller, so rights are handled on a page-per-page basis instead of by resource.

So if a logged user wants to manipulate a resource, he or she needs to have the correct rights on the appropriate controller. For instance, to be able to access the “Product Catalog” page the user need READ access, because showing the page requires “reading” the Product information. If the user wants to delete a product, (s)he needs DELETE rights.

To enforce this security policy, you have to set up the adequate checks for each one of the actions of your controller. Policies are declared as annotations on top of every controller Action method:

<?php
use PrestaShopBundle\Security\Annotation\AdminSecurity;

class SomeController extends FrameworkBundleAdminController
{
    /**
     * @AdminSecurity(
     *     "is_granted(['read', 'update', 'create', 'delete'], request.get('_legacy_controller'))",
     *     message="You do not have permission to update this.",
     *     redirectRoute="some_route_name"
     * )
     *
     */
    public function fooAction(Request $request) { 
        // action code
    }
}

Access rules convention

The following access rules must be enforced:

  • indexAction requires READ permission and only this one
  • createAction which allows to create an item, requires CREATE permission
  • editAction which allows to update an item, requires UPDATE permission
  • deleteAction which allows to delete an item, requires DELETE permission

Moreover, if one page allows to modify some prestashop settings, this action can be used by users who are granted either CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE permissions.

How does this work?

The AdminSecurity annotation will check if the logged user is granted to access the Action (ie. to the URL). This annotation has 5 properties:

  • The first argument is an evaluated expression that must return a boolean. In this case, we’re checking if the user has all the rights on the current Controller.

    As explained before, access rights (“roles”) in PrestaShop are managed by action (Create, Read, Update, Delete) and related controller. Since roles are currently managed by the legacy system using the legacy controller names, you need to provide the name of the legacy controller to the security system.

The _legacy_controller parameter is explained below in the “Routing in PrestaShop” section.
  • message - (optional) Contains the error message displayed to the user, if (s)he’s not allowed to perform the action.

  • redirectRoute - (optional) Route name the router will use to redirect the user if (s)he’s not allowed to perform the action.

  • domain - (optional) Describes the translation domain for the message.

  • url - (optional) Used to configure an URL for redirection instead of relying on the router.

This property is temporary and will be removed once the Dashboard has been migrated to Symfony.
If you use both url and redirectRoute at the same time, redirectRoute will win!

Demo Mode

PrestaShop is provided with a Demo Mode that, when enabled, defines access application-wide rights that override whatever rights the current user may have. In other words, something that is disabled in Demo Mode will be disabled for all users, even if that user would normally have access to it.

The demo mode can be enabled by setting _PS_MODE_DEMO_ to true in config/defines.inc.php.

When an action needs to be restricted in Demo Mode, you can use the DemoRestricted annotation:

<?php
use PrestaShopBundle\Security\Annotation\DemoRestricted;

/**
 * @DemoRestricted("route_to_be_redirected",
 *     message="You can't do this when demo mode is enabled.",
 *     domain="Admin.Global"
 * )
 *
 */
public function fooAction(Request $request) {
    // do something here  
}
message and domain are both optional.

Dynamic restrictions

Sometimes, it may be necessary to dynamically decide on restrictions (eg. depending on user input or an action performed). In addition, it may happen that a Controller action has to handle both the update and display of a resource. What if we want to allow the READ action but not the UPDATE?

In this case, you can use the Controllers helper functions we described above: isDemoModeEnabled() and authorizationLevel().

Routing in PrestaShop

Routes are responsible for mapping a controller action to an url, you can read more about routing in symfony docs.

PrestaShop uses YAML files for service declaration and routing (NOT ANNOTATIONS).

Routes are declared in src/PrestaShopBundle/Resources/config/routing folder, following the menu organization.

The routing is organized as follows:

.
├── admin
│   ├── _common.yml
│   ├── configure
│   │   ├── advanced_parameters
│   │   ├── _configure.yml
│   │   └── shop_parameters
│   ├── improve
│   │   ├── design
│   │   ├── _improve.yml
│   │   ├── international
│   │   ├── modules
│   │   ├── payment
│   │   └── shipping
│   ├── _security.yml
│   ├── _errors.yml
│   └── sell
│       ├── catalog
│       ├── orders
│       ├── _sell.yml
│       └── stocks.yml
├── admin.yml
├── api
│   ├── attributes.yml
│   ├── categories.yml
│   ├── features.yml
│   ├── i18n.yml
│   ├── improve
│   │   └── design
│   ├── manufacturers.yml
│   ├── stock_movements.yml
│   ├── stocks.yml
│   ├── suppliers.yml
│   └── translations.yml
└── api.yml

Property _legacy_controller contains the old name of the related controller. The _legacy_link keeps a link between legacy urls and new ones (when going to a page using old link it will redirect to the new one instead).

Property _legacy_controller allows to map a Symfony controller name to a legacy controller name. Many components in PrestaShop rely on a legacy controller name. Examples: Security restrictions, menu items management, or the collapsable help right sidebar.

For example, this is how the “Configure > Advanced Parameters -> System Information” page route configuration looks like:

admin_system_information:
    path: system_information
    methods: [GET]
    defaults:
        _controller: 'PrestaShopBundle\Controller\Admin\AdvancedParameters\SystemInformationController::indexAction'
        _legacy_controller: AdminInformation
        _legacy_link: AdminInformation
PrestaShop uses YAML files for service declaration and routing

Routing configuration

route_name:
    path: some/url
    methods: [GET]
    defaults:
        _controller: 'PrestaShopBundle\Controller\Path\To\ControllerClass::{actionName}Action'
        _legacy_controller: LegacyController
        _legacy_link: {LegacyController}:{actionName}
        
# In some cases several controllers/actions are managed by the same migrated controller
# You have the possibility to set an array as _legacy_link thus preventing you from defining alias routes
other_route_name:
    path: some/other/url
    methods: [GET]
    defaults:
        _controller: 'PrestaShopBundle\Controller\Path\To\Other\ControllerClass::{actionName}Action'
        _legacy_controller: LegacyController
        _legacy_link:
            - {LegacyController}:{actionName}
            - {LegacyController}:{aliasActionName}        

The actionName part is optional for the index action (equivalent to list), therefore these three notations are equivalent:

admin_emails:
    path: /emails
    methods: [GET]
    defaults:
        _controller: 'PrestaShopBundle:Admin\Configure\AdvancedParameters\Email:index'
        _legacy_controller: AdminEmails
        _legacy_link:
            - AdminEmails
            - AdminEmails:index
            - AdminEmails:list

Automatic redirection

Finally some urls might have been generated manually or hard coded. To avoid losing these legacy urls a Symfony listener checks each call to the back office and tries to match it to a migrated url if it is found then the response is automatically redirected to the new migrated url.

    admin/index.php?controller=AdminPaymentPreferences => Redirected to /admin/preferences
    admin/index.php?controller=AdminPaymentPreferences&action=update => Redirected to /admin/preferences/update
    admin/index.php?controller=AdminPaymentPreferences&action=export => No redirection, the legacy controller is called

Javascript generation

In order to avoid hardcoded links in JavaScript, Prestashop uses the Router component.