Controllers

Controllers are the core of any web app, they route an HTTP request through the necessary layers of code to finally return a response.

Routing

In Tempest, a controller action can be any class' method, as long as it's annotated with a Route attribute. Tempest offers some convenient Route attributes out of the box, and you can write your own if you need to.

Out of the box, these Route attributes are available:

• Route
• Get
• Post

You can use them like so:

final readonly class HomeController
{
    #[Get(uri: '/home')]
    public function __invoke(): View
    {
        return view('home.view.php');
    }
}

Requests

Any web app will soon need to validate and access request data. In Tempest, that data is available via request classes. Every public property on such a request class represents a value that's being sent from the client to the server. Tempest relies on PHP's type system to validate that data, and offers a bunch of validation attributes for more fine-tuned validation.

final class BookRequest implements Request
{
    use IsRequest;
    
    #[Length(min: 10, max: 120)]
    public string $title;
    
    public ?DateTimeImmutable $publishedAt = null;
    
    public string $summary;
}

Note that this is a pattern you'll see often throughout Tempest: any class that interacts with the framework should implement an interface, and the framework provides a trait with a default implementation, just like Request and IsRequest in this case.

Once you've created your request class, you can add it as an argument to your controller method:

final readonly class BookController
{
    #[Post(uri: '/books/create')]
    public function store(BookRequest $request): Response
    {
        $book = map($request)->to(Book::class)->save();
        
        return response()
            ->redirect(uri([self::class, 'show'], id: $book->id));
    }
}

A full overview of Request objects can be found here .

A note on data mapping

The map() function is another powerful feature that sets Tempest apart. We'll discuss it more in depth when looking at models, but it's already worth mentioning: Tempest can treat any kind of object as "a model", and is able to map data into those objects from different sources.

You could map a request class with its data to a model class, but you could also map a model object to a JSON array; you could map JSON data to models, a model to an array, and so on. The map() function will detect what kind of data source its dealing with and what kind of target that data should be mapped into.

Responses

Tempest controllers must return one of two objects: a View or a Response . Returning a view is a shorthand for returning a successful response with that view. As a shorthand, you can use the view() function to construct a view.

final readonly class BookController
{
    #[Get(uri: '/books/{book}')]
    public function show(Book $book, User $user): View
    {
        return view('Front/books/detail.view.php',
            book: $book,
            user: $user,
        );
    }
}

You can read all about views in the next chapter .

If you're returning responses Tempest has a bunch of responses built-in:

• Created — the 201 response with an optional body
• Download — downloads a file from the browser
• File — shows a file in the browser
• Invalid — a response with form validation errors, redirecting to the previous page
• NotFound — the 404 response with an optional body
• Ok — the 200 response with an optional body
• Redirect — the redirect response
• ServerError — a 500 server error response

A full overview of responses can be found here .

Returning responses from controllers looks like this:

use Tempest\Http\Responses\Download;
use Tempest\Http\Responses\Redirect;
use Tempest\Http\Response;

class AdminDownloadController
{  
    #[Get('/admin/download/{path}')]
    public function download(string $path): Response
    {
        $allowed = /* … */;
        
        if (! $allowed) {
            return new Redirect('/');
        }
        
        $sanitizedPath = /* … */;
        
        return new Download($sanitizedPath);
    }
}

Content Types

Tempest will automatically infer the response's content type from the request's Accept header. You can override its content type manually though:

use Tempest\Http\ContentType;
use Tempest\Http\Responses\Ok;

class JsonController
{  
    #[Get('/json')]
    public function json(string $path): Response
    {
        $data = [ /* … */ ];
    
        return (new Ok($data))->setContentType(ContentType::JSON);
    }
}

Note that you don't have to worry about setting content types if the request has the Accept header specified (wip).

Response Objects

If you want to, you can create your own Response objects for your specific use cases:

use Tempest\Http\IsResponse;
use Tempest\Http\Response;
use Tempest\Http\Status;

final class BookCreated implements Response
{
    use IsResponse;

    public function __construct(Book $book) 
    {
        $this->status = Status::CREATED;
        $this->addHeader('x-book-id', $book->id);   
    }
}

Custom Routes

Thanks to route attributes, you can make your own, custom Route implementations. These custom route classes can be used to make route groups that add middleware, do authorization checks, etc.

#[Attribute]
final readonly class AdminRoute extends Route
{
    public function __construct(string $uri, Method $method)
    {
        parent::__construct(
            uri: $uri,
            method: $method,
            middelware: [
                AdminMiddleware::class,
                LogUserActionsMiddleware::class,
            ]
        );
    }
}

You can now use this AdminRoute attribute for all controller methods that should only be accessed by admins:

final readonly class BookController
{
    // …
    
    #[AdminRoute('/books', Method::POST)]
    public function store(BookRequest $request): Response
    {
        // …
    }
}

Generating URIs

You can generate URIs referencing controller methods by using the uri function:

// Invokable classes can be referenced directly:
uri(HomeController::class); 
// /home

// Classes with named methods are referenced using an array
uri([BookController::class, 'store']); 
// /books

// Additional URI parameters are passed in as named arguments:
uri([BookController::class, 'show'], id: $book->id); 
// /books/1

Route Binding

Tempest will map IDs to model instances — a topic we'll cover in depth in the Models chapter .

final readonly class BookController
{
    #[Get('/books/{book}')]
    public function show(Book $book): Response { /* … */ }
}