README

PLEASE USE phoole/route library instead

phossa2/route is a fast, full-fledged and feature-rich application level routing library for PHP.

It requires PHP 5.4, supports PHP 7.0+ and HHVM. It is compliant with PSR-1, PSR-2, PSR-3, PSR-4, and the proposed PSR-5.

Why another routing library ?

Super fast ! If it matters to you.
Support different routing strategies and combinations of these strategies.
Support different regular expression routing algorithms including the fastRoute algorithm
Concise route syntax. Route parameters and optional route segments.
Fast routing using path prefix checking in the collectors.
Multiple routing collections allowed.
Different level of default handlers.
Fine control of routing process by multiple level of extensions.
Route and regex debugging.

Installation

Install via the composer utility.

composer require "phossa2/route"

or add the following lines to your composer.json

{
    "require": {
       "phossa2/route": "2.*"
    }
}

Usage

Inject route definitions (pattern, handler, default values etc.) into the dispatcher and then call either match() or dispatch().

use Phossa2\Route\Route;
use Phossa2\Route\Dispatcher;

// dispatcher with default collector & resolver
$dispatcher = (new Dispatcher())
    ->addGet(
        '/blog/{action:xd}[/{year:d}[/{month:d}[/{date:d}]]]',
        function($result) {
            $params = $result->getParameters();
            echo "action is " . $params['action'];
        }
    )->addPost(
        '/blog/post',
        'handler2'
    )->addRoute(new Route(
        'GET,HEAD',
        '/blog/read[/{id:d}]',
        'handler3',
        ['id' => '1'] // default values
    ));

// diaptcher (match & execute controller action)
$dispatcher->dispatch('GET', '/blog/list/2016/05/01');

Or load routes from an array,

$routes = [
    '/user/{action:xd}/{id:d}' => [
        'GET,POST',               // methods,
        function ($result) {
            $params = $result->getParameters();
            echo "user id is " . $params['id'];
        },                        // handler,
        ['id' => 1]               // default values
    ],
    // ...
];
$dispatcher = (new Dispatcher())->loadRoutes($routes);
$dispatcher->dispatch('GET', '/user/view/123456');

Route syntax

{Named} parameters

A route pattern syntax is used where {foo} specifies a named parameter or a placeholder with name foo and default regex pattern [^/]++. In order to match more specific types, you may specify a custom regex pattern like {foo:[0-9]+}.

// with 'action' & 'id' two named params
$dispatcher->addGet('/user/{action:[^0-9/][^/]*}/{id:[0-9]+}', 'handler1');

Predefined shortcuts can be used for placeholders as follows,

':d}'   => ':[0-9]++}',             // digit only
':l}'   => ':[a-z]++}',             // lower case
':u}'   => ':[A-Z]++}',             // upper case
':a}'   => ':[0-9a-zA-Z]++}',       // alphanumeric
':c}'   => ':[0-9a-zA-Z+_\-\.]++}', // common chars
':nd}'  => ':[^0-9/]++}',           // not digits
':xd}'  => ':[^0-9/][^/]*+}',       // no leading digits

The previous pattern can be rewritten into,

// with 'action' & 'id' two named params
$dispatcher->addGet('/user/{action:xd}/{id:d}', 'handler1');

[Optional] segments

Optional segments in the route pattern can be specified with [] as follows,
```
// $action, $year/$month/$date are all optional
$pattern = '/blog[/{action:xd}][/{year:d}[/{month:d}[/{date:d}]]]';
```
where optional segments can be NESTED. Unlike other libraries, optional segments are not limited to the end of the pattern, as long as it is a valid pattern like the [/{action:xd}] in the example.
Syntax limitations
- Parameter name MUST start with a character
  
  Since {2} has special meanings in regex. Parameter name MUST start with a character. And the use of {} inside/outside placeholders may cause confusion, thus is not recommended.
- [] outside placeholder means OPTIONAL segment only
  
  [] can not be used outside placeholders as part of a regex pattern, IF YOU DO NEED to use them as part of the regex pattern, please include them INSIDE a placeholder.
- Use of capturing groups () inside placeholders is not allowed
  
  Capturing groups () can not be used inside placeholders. For example {user:(root|phossa)} is not valid. Instead, you can use either use {user:root|phossa} or {user:(?:root|phossa)}.

Default Values

Default values can be added to named parameters at the end in the form of {action:xd=list}. Default values have to be alphanumeric chars. For example,

// $action, $year/$month/$date are all optional
$pattern = '/blog[/{action:xd=list}][/{year:d=2016}[/{month:d=01}[/{date:d=01}]]]';
$dispatcher->addGet($pattern, function($result) {
    $params = $result->getParameters();
    echo $params['year'];
})->dispatch('GET', '/blog');

Routes

Defining routes with dispatcher

You may define routes with dispatcher. But, it is actually defining routes with the first route collector in the dispatcher.
```
// a new route collector will be added automatically if not yet
$dispatcher = (new Dispatcher())->addPost('/blog/post', 'handler2');
```
addGet() and addPost() are wrappers of addRoute(RouteInterface).

Multiple routing collectors

Routes can be grouped into different collections by using multiple collectors.

use Phossa2\Route\Collector\Collector;

// '/user' related
$collector_user = (new Collector())
    ->addGet('/user/list/{id:d}', 'handler1')
    ->addGet('/user/view/{id:d}', 'handler2')
    ->addPost('/user/new', 'handler3');

// '/blog' related
$collector_blog = (new Collector())
    ->addGet('/blog/list/{user_id:d}', 'handler4')
    ->addGet('/blog/read/{blog_id:d}', 'handler5');

$dispatcher->addCollector($collector_user)
           ->addCollector($collector_blog);

Path prefix matching

Collectors may set a path prefix using setPathPrefix() to indicate the exact URI path prefix is handling. Any non-matching prefix found will skip the collector entirely.

// '/user/' prefix
$collector_user = (new Collector())
    ->setPathPrefix('/user/')
    ->addGet('/user/list/{id:d}', 'handler1')
    ->addGet('/user/view/{id:d}', 'handler2')
    ->addPost('/user/new', 'handler3');

Same route pattern

User can define same route pattern with different http methods.

$dispatcher
    ->addGet('/user/{$id}', 'handler1')
    ->addPost('/user/{$id}', 'handler2');

Dispatching

Dispatch with dispatcher's dispatch()

$dispatcher->dispatch('GET', '/user/view/123');

Match instead of dispatching

Instead of executing handler by default in dispatch(), more control by user if using the match() method

if ($dispatcher->match('GET', '/user/view/1234')) {
    $result = $dispatcher->getResult();
    switch($result->getStatus()) {
        case 200:
          // ...
          break;
        case 404:
          // ...
          break;
        default:
          // ...
          break;
    }
} else {
    // no match found
    // ...
}

Handlers

Route handler

Route is defined with a handler for status 200 OK only.

use Phossa2\Route\Route;
use Phossa2\Route\Status;

$route = new Route(
    'GET',
    '/user/{action:xd}/{id:d}',
    function($result) { // handler for Status::OK
        // ...
    }
);

Default handlers

Dispatcher and collectors can have multiple handlers corresponding to different result status.

If the result has no handler set (for example, no match found), then the collector's handler(same status code) will be retrieved. If still no luck, the dispatcher's handler (same status code) will be used if defined.

Dispatcher-level handlers,

use Phossa2\Route\Status;

$dispatcher->addHandler(
    function($result) {
        echo "method " . $result->getMethod() . " not allowed";
    },
    Status::METHOD_NOT_ALLOWED
);

Collector-level handlers,

$collector->addHandler(
    function($result) {
        // ...
    },
    Status::MOVED_PERMANENTLY
);

When addHandler() with status set to 0 will cause this handler be the default handler for other status.

use Phossa2\Route\Status;

$dispatcher->addHandler(
    function($result) {
        echo "no other handler found";
    },
    0 // <-- match all other status
);

Handler resolving

Most of the time, matching route will return a handler like [ 'ControllerName', 'actionName' ]. Handler resolver can be used to resolving this pseudo handler into a real callable.
```
use Phossa2\Route\Collector\Collector;
use Phossa2\Route\Resolver\ResolverSimple;

// dispatcher with default resolver
$dispatcher = new Route\Dispatcher(
    new Collector(),
    new ResolverSimple() // the default resolver anyway
);
```
Users may write their own handler resolver by implementing Phossa2\Route\Interfaces\ResolverInterface.

Extensions

Extensions are callables dealing with the matching result or other tasks before or after certain dispatching stages.

Extensions can be added to Dispatcher, Collector or even Route.

Use of extensions

Extensions MUST return a boolean value to indicate wether to proceed with the dispatching process or not. FALSE means stop and returns to top level.

Extensions can be either a Phossa2\Event\EventableExtensionAbstract and added with addExtension() or addExt(), or a callable with signature of callableName(Phossa2\Event\EventInterface $event): bool which can be added as extension via addExt(callable, eventName, priority).

use Phossa2\Route\Status;
use Phossa2\Route\Dispatcher;
use Phossa2\Route\Extensions\RedirectToHttps;

// create dispatcher
$dispatcher = new Dispatcher();

// direct any HTTP request to HTTPS port before any routing
$dispatcher
    ->addExtension(new RedirectToHttps())
    ->addHandler(function() {
          echo "redirect to https";
      }, Status::MOVED_PERMANENTLY)
    ->dispatch('GET', '/user/view/123');

Force authentication for any '/user/' prefixed URL,

use Phossa2\Route\Status;
use Phossa2\Route\Dispatcher;
use Phossa2\Route\Extensions\UserAuth;

$dispatcher = new Dispatcher();

$dispatcher
  // add handler for unauthorized routing
  ->addHandler(
      function() {
          echo "need auth";
      }, Status::UNAUTHORIZED)

  // add a route
  ->addGet('/user/view/{id:d}', function() {
          echo "AUTHED!";
      })

  // add extension to force auth routes under '/user/'
  ->addExt(function($event) {
          $result = $event->getParam('result');
          $path = $result->getPath();
          if (!isset($_SESSION['authed']) && '/user/' === substr($path, 0, 6)) {
              $result->setStatus(Status::UNAUTHORIZED);
              return false;
          }
          return true;
      }, Dispatcher::EVENT_BEFORE_MATCH);

// try a not authed route
$dispatcher->dispatch('GET', '/user/view/123');

// try a authed route
$_SESSION['authed'] = 1;
$dispatcher->dispatch('GET', '/user/view/123');

Examples of extension

Validation of a parameter value on a route,

use Phossa2\Route\Status;
use Phossa2\Route\Dispatcher;
use Phossa2\Route\Extensions\IdValidation;

$dispatcher = new Dispatcher();

// add extension to a route
$route = (new Route('GET', '/user/{id:d}', null))
  ->addExtension(new IdValidation());

// will fail
$dispatcher->addRoute($route)->dispatch('GET', '/user/1000');

Extension events

Three types of events, dispatcher level, collector level and route level. List of all events in the order of execution.
- Dispatcher::EVENT_BEFORE_MATCH before matching starts
  - Collector::EVENT_BEFORE_MATCH before matching in a collector
  - Collector::EVENT_AFTER_MATCH after a successful match in the collector
- Dispatcher::EVENT_AFTER_MATCH after a successful match at dispatcher level
- Dispatcher::EVENT_BEFORE_DISPATCH after a sucessful match, before dispatching to any handler
  - Route::EVENT_BEFORE_HANDLER before executing handler(route's or collector's) for this route
  - Route::EVENT_AFTER_HANDLER after handler successfully executed
- Dispatcher::EVENT_AFTER_DISPATCH back to dispatcher level, after handler executed successfully
- Dispatcher::EVENT_BEFORE_HANDLER match failed or no handler found for the matching route, before execute dispatcher's default handler
- Dispatcher::EVENT_AFTER_HANDLER after dispatcher's default handler executed

Debugging

Sometimes, you need to know what went wrong.

$dispatcher->enableDebug()->setDebugger($logger);

Where $logger is a PSR-3 compatible logger implmenting the interface Psr\Log\LoggerInterface. The dispatcher will send logs of dispatching process to the logger.

Routing strategies

There are a couple of URL based routing strategies supported in this library. Different strategy collectors can be combined together into one dispatcher.

Parameter Pairs Routing (PPR)

Using parameter and value pairs for routing,
```
http://servername/path/index.php/controller/action/id/1/name/nick
```
Parameters order can be arbitary, but have to appear in pairs. Advantage of this scheme is fast and web crawler friendly. If URL rewriting is used, the above can be written into the following,
```
http://servername/path/controller/action/id/1/name/nick
```
Instead of using '/' as the parameter seperator, any URL valid characters except for the '?' and '&' can be used as a seperator.
```
http://servername/path/controller-action-id-1-name-nick
```
This strategy is implemented in Phossa2\Route\Collector\CollectorPPR class.
Query Parameter Routing (QPR)

The routing info is directly embedded in the URL query. The advantage of this scheme is fast and clear.
```
http://servername/path/?r=controller-action-id-1-name-nick
```
This strategy is implemented in Phossa2\Route\Collector\CollectorQPR class.

Regular Expression Routing (RER)

Regular expression based routing is the default routing strategy for this library and implemented in Phossa2\Route\Collector\Collector class.

// created with default RER collector
$dispatcher = (new Dispatcher())
    ->addCollector(new Collector())     // regex based routing first
    ->addCollector(new CollectorQPR()); // support for legacy QPR

Regex matching algorithms

Different regex matching algorithms can be used with the RER collector.

FastRoute algorithm

This Group Count Based algorithm is implemented in Phossa2\Route\Parser\ParserGcb class and explained in detail in this article "Fast request routing using regular expressions".

phossa-route uses this algorithm by default.

Standard algorithm

This algorithm is developed by phossa2/route and a little bit slower than the fastRoute GCB algorithm. It is implemented in Phossa2\Route\Parser\ParserStd class.

Use this standard algorithm,

use Phossa2\Route\Dispatcher;
use Phossa2\Route\Parser\ParserStd;
use Phossa2\Route\Collector\Collector;

// use standard algorithm
$dispatcher = new Dispatcher(new Collector(new ParserStd));

Comments on routing algorithms
- It does NOT matter that much as you may think.
  
  If you are using routing library in your application, different algorithms may differ only 0.1 - 0.2ms for a single request, which seems meaningless for an application unless you are using it as a standalone router.
- If you DO care about routing speed
  
  Use different routing strategy like Parameter Pairs Routing (PPR) which is much faster than the regex based routing. Also by carefully design your routes, you may achieve better results even if you are using a slower algorithm.
- Try network routing or server routing if you just CRAZY ABOUT THE SPEED.

Change log

Please see CHANGELOG from more information.

Testing

$ composer test

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTE for more information.

Dependencies

PHP >= 5.4.0
phossa2/event >= 2.1.5
phossa2/shared >= 2.0.27

License

MIT License

Appendix

Performance

Worst-case matching

This benchmark matches the last route and unknown route. It generates a randomly prefixed and suffixed route in an attempt to thwart any optimization. 1,000 routes each with 8 arguments.

This benchmark consists of 14 tests. Each test is executed 1,000 times, the results pruned, and then averaged. Values that fall outside of 3 standard deviations of the mean are discarded.

"Parameter Pairs Routing (PPR)" is fastest and used as baseline.

Test Name	Results	Time	+ Interval	Change
Phossa PPR - unknown route (1000 routes)	998	0.0000724551	+0.0000000000	baseline
Phossa PPR - last route (1000 routes)	993	0.0000925307	+0.0000200755	28% slower
Symfony2 Dumped - unknown route (1000 routes)	998	0.0004353616	+0.0003629065	501% slower
Phroute - last route (1000 routes)	999	0.0006205601	+0.0005481050	756% slower
Phossa - unknown route (1000 routes)	998	0.0006903790	+0.0006179239	853% slower
FastRoute - unknown route (1000 routes)	1,000	0.0006911943	+0.0006187392	854% slower
FastRoute - last route (1000 routes)	999	0.0006962751	+0.0006238200	861% slower
Phroute - unknown route (1000 routes)	998	0.0007134676	+0.0006410125	885% slower
Symfony2 Dumped - last route (1000 routes)	993	0.0008066097	+0.0007341545	1013% slower
Phossa - last route (1000 routes)	998	0.0009104498	+0.0008379947	1157% slower
Symfony2 - unknown route (1000 routes)	989	0.0023998006	+0.0023273455	3212% slower
Symfony2 - last route (1000 routes)	999	0.0025880890	+0.0025156339	3472% slower
Aura v2 - last route (1000 routes)	981	0.0966411463	+0.0965686912	133281% slower
Aura v2 - unknown route (1000 routes)	992	0.1070026719	+0.1069302168	147581% slower

First route matching

This benchmark tests how quickly each router can match the first route. 1,000 routes each with 8 arguments.

This benchmark consists of 7 tests. Each test is executed 1,000 times, the results pruned, and then averaged. Values that fall outside of 3 standard deviations of the mean are discarded.

Note Both FastRoute and Phroute implement a static route table, so they are fast at the first route matching (which is a static route)

Test Name	Results	Time	+ Interval	Change
FastRoute - first route	999	0.0000403543	+0.0000000000	baseline
Phroute - first route	998	0.0000405911	+0.0000002368	1% slower
Symfony2 Dumped - first route	999	0.0000590617	+0.0000187074	46% slower
Phossa PPR - first route	977	0.0000678727	+0.0000275184	68% slower
Phossa - first route	999	0.0000898475	+0.0000494932	123% slower
Symfony2 - first route	998	0.0003983802	+0.0003580259	887% slower
Aura v2 - first route	986	0.0004391784	+0.0003988241	988% slower

URL rewrite

Setup URL rewriting to do routing with index.php

Apache .htaccess with mod_rewrite engine is on

DirectorySlash Off
Options -MultiViews
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^ index.php [QSA,L]

and in your httpd.conf file to enable using of .htaccess

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin me@mysite.com
  DocumentRoot "/path/www.mysite.com/public"
  ServerName mysite.com
  ServerAlias www.mysite.com

  <Directory "/path/www.mysite.com/public">
    Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +Includes
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Nginx configration in nginx.conf

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  www.mysite.com mysite.com;
    root         /path/www.mysite.com/public;

    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;

    location /index.php {
        fastcgi_connect_timeout 3s;
        fastcgi_read_timeout 10s;
        include fastcgi.conf;
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    }
}

Routing issues

Base on the request informations, such as request device, source ip, request method etc., service provider may direct request to different hosts, servers, app modules or handlers.
- Network level routing
  
  Common case, such as routing based on request's source ip, routes the request to a NEAREST server, this is common in content distribution network (CDN), and is done at network level.
- Web server routing
  
  For performance reason, some of the simple routing can be done at web server level, such as using apache or ngix configs to do simple routing.
  
  For example, if your server goes down for maintenance, you may replace the .htaccess file as follows,
```
DirectorySlash Off
Options -MultiViews
DirectoryIndex maintenance.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^ maintenance.php [QSA,L]
```
- App level routing
  
  It solves much more complicated issues, and much more flexible.
  
  Usually, routing is done at a single point index.php. All the requests are configured to be handled by this script first and routed to different routines.

phossa2 / route

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