Favourite Kohana Tips & Features?

Question

Inspired from the other community wikis, I'm interested in hearing about the lesser known Kohana tips, tricks and features.

• Please, include only one tip per answer.
• Add Kohana versions if necessary.

This a community wiki.

Answer 1

Checking for an internal request (Kohana 3)

if (Request::instance() !== $this->request)
{
    print 'Internal called made with Request::factory';
}

Answer 2

Adding additional data to pivot tables using ORM (Kohana 3)

ORM's add function accepts a third parameter where you can specify additional data to be saved on the pivot table.

For example, if a User has_many Roles and a Role has_many Users (through a table named roles_users), you can save information to the date_role_added column on that table:

$user->add('role', $role, array('date_role_added' => $today_date));

Answer 3

Show last query executed (Kohana 3)

echo Database::instance()->last_query

Taken from this question.

Answer 4

The difference between this->request->route->uri() and this->request->uri() (Kohana 3)

// Current URI = welcome/test/5 
// Using default route ":controller/:action/:id"

// This returns "welcome/test/5"
echo $this->request->uri(); 

// This returns "welcome/test1/5"
echo $this->request->uri(array( 'action' => 'test1' )); 

// This returns "welcome/index"
echo $this->request->route->uri();

// This returns "welcome/test1"
echo $this->request->route->uri(array( 'action' => 'test1' ));

As you can see, $this->request->route->uri() uses current route defaults (id is null), while $this->request->uri() applies current uri segments.

Answer 5

Maintainable routes

Instead of writing a link like so

<a href="<?php echo URL::base(); ?>hello/path/somearg/">link</a>

You can call the route by name (from bootstrap.php) and echo the link.

<a href="<?php echo URL::base() . Route::get('route_name')->uri(array('arg' => 'somearg')); ?>">link</a>

And here would be the route in application/bootstrap.php for reference

Route::set('route_name', 'hello/path/<arg>')
    ->defaults(array(
    'controller' => 'home',
    'action' => 'index'
    ));

Answer 6

Generating Form::select() options from database resultset

$options = ORM::factory('model')
 ->order_by('title','ASC')
 ->find_all()
 ->as_array('id','title');

$select = Form::select('select_name',$options,$val);

If you want to add a 0 value option, do:

$options = Arr::merge(array(0 => 'Select some option'), $options);

or

$options = array(0 => 'Select some option') + $options;

Answer 7

Detect ajax request and deactivate autorendering

// Somewhere in your controller before-method
$isAjax = preg_match("/ajax/", $this->request->action);
if($isAjax) {
    if(!Request::is_ajax()) {
        die("Not allowed.");
    }

    $this->autoRender = false;
}



   // Some ajax action-method
    public function action_ajaxDoSth()
    {
       // return json or do sth. else
    }