Today we will understand what is a controller in Magento and how to create it.

I hope you understand the MVC design pattern of Magento. Click here to see an introduction.

First of all, create a module. Click here to see the steps.

Now, create a folder named controllers under the Basic folder ( if you followed my create module post )

Now create a new PHP file FirstController.php inside the controllers folder with the following code:

<?php
class Test_Basic_FirstController extends Mage_Core_Controller_Front_Action
{
   public function indexAction()
   {
      echo "Hello from first controller";
   }
}

 

*Note:
We should understand the naming conventions of Magento.

Magento understands following naming conventions for controllers and methods:

  1. All controller files must have Controller.php after the name, hence FirstController.php
  2. All methods that represents a URL must have Action at the end, hence indexAction
  3. The name of the class must be like Namespace_Modulename_YournameController, hence Test_Basic_FirstController

Next, we need to define this controller in our modules configuration file. Add following lines in the etc\config.xml file-

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<config>
   <modules>
      <Test_Basic>
          <version>1.0</version>
      </Test_Basic>
   </modules>
   <frontend> 
       <routers>     
           <basic>        
              <use>standard</use>            
              <args>
                  <module>Test_Basic</module>
                  <frontName>custom</frontName>
              </args>
           </basic>
      </routers> 
   </frontend>
</config>

The <frontend> node here defines all the changes that we are going to make in the user area of the website.
The <routers> node is used to define the controllers of our module.
We can use any name instead of <basic> but it is advised to use module name to avoid confusions.
In the <args> section, we are telling Magento that the module to look for is Test_Basic ( Test/Basic folder )
With this, Magento will be able to find the file in the controllers folder with the class name Test_Basic_NameController where Name is the name of controller provided in the URL.
The <frontName> tag is used to distinguish our controller’s URL from others, hence it should be unique.

Refresh the cache from admin.
The methods of a controller can be executed with the following URL pattern:

http://<sitename>/frontName/ControllerName/ActionName

So, if our site is currently on localhost with the name magento, we can execute our controller’s method with the URL-

http://localhost/magento/custom/first/index

Since, index is considered as default, we can also call with the URL-

http://localhost/magento/custom/first
Loading the layout

If you want to load the current site’s layout, just add following two lines in your indexAction method-

$this->loadLayout()
$this->renderLayout()

Call the url again and you should see the layout loaded for your action.

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