Codeigniter Routing - Using it too much?

Question

I'm new to Codeigniter, and I'm trying to get accustomed to it by converting an old site into CI.

One thing I'm having trouble understand is the routing. If I don't want to have my url structure like /controller/method/id, I have to change it to something like $route['controller/(:num)'] = "controller/method/$1"; in routes.php. It just seems inefficient to me, is there something else I should be doing?

For example, on my site, the urls are /game/4242 and /player/SomeDude

Answer 1

Well, routing is effecient - the alternative is remapping your controllers.

Let's take a look at both possibilities.

An imaginary situtation: At a later point, you'd like to allow your users to show badges/medals/achievements/something on their profile.

With routing, you can achieve it like this:

$route['player/(:any)/(:any)'] = "player/show_$2/$1";
$route['player/(:any)'] = "player/show_profile/$1";

And your controller could in turn look like this:

class Player extends CI_Controller
{
  public function show_profile( $username )
  {
    // the profile info
  }

  public function show_badges( $username )
  {
    // the profiles badges
  }

  public function show_scores( $username )
  {
    // the profiles scores
  }
}

}

Basically, this allows you to simply add another method in your controller prefixing the method with show_ (like public method show_friends( $username ) )and you can access it instantly by going to /player/SomeDude/friends

Looking at the alternative, remapping your controller would allow you not to use routes, but write a controller like this:

class Player extends CI_Controller
{

  public function _remap($username, $params = array())
  {
    if(empty($username))
      show_404();

    $this->user = $this->user_model->find($username);

    if(count($params) == 0)
      $method = 'index';
    else
      $method = $params[0];

    unset($params[0]); //No need to send the method along as a parameter

    $method = 'process_'.$method;
    if (method_exists($this, $method))
    {
      return call_user_func_array(array($this, $method), $params);
    }
    show_404();
  }

  public method process_index()
  {
    // the profile info
  }

  public method process_badges()
  {
    // the profiles badges
  }

  public method process_scores()
  {
    // the profiles scores
  }

}

Personally, I like routing. I think it's transparent and makes my controllers look cleaner.