Multiple flashes with different classes
There were a couple of things I didn't like about using $this->Session->setFlash(), so I wrote my own method for saving flashes and helper for displaying them.
While it's a step up from the old flash method, using $this->Session->setFlash() has two problems:
I added this to my AppController:
Then I added this to app/views/helpers/flash.php:
Now in my controllers I do this:
And in my layout I added this:
Now you can us css to style your messages. The classes are 'status', 'success' and 'error'.
This is inspired by the set_message() function in Drupal.
- You can only do one flash message.
- It's always the same color. I want to use red for problems, green for success and grey for neutral status messages.
I added this to my AppController:
Controller Class:
<?php
class AppController extends Controller
{
var $helpers = array('Flash');
/*
* Add a message to the messages array in the session like this:
* $this->flash( 'You are logged in.', 'success' );
*/
function flash( $message, $class = 'status' )
{
$old = $this->Session->read('messages');
$old[$class][] = $message;
$this->Session->write( 'messages', $old );
}
}
?>
Then I added this to app/views/helpers/flash.php:
Helper Class:
<?php
class FlashHelper extends Helper
{
var $helpers = array( 'Session' );
function show()
{
// Get the messages from the session
$messages = $this->Session->read( 'messages' );
$html = '';
// Add a div for each message using the type as the class
foreach ($messages as $type => $msgs)
{
foreach ($msgs as $msg)
{
if (!empty($msg)) {
$html .= "<div class='$type'><p>$msg</p></div>";
}
}
}
$html .= "</div>";
// Clear the messages array from the session
$this->Session->del( 'messages' );
return $this->output( $html );
}
}
?>
Now in my controllers I do this:
$this->flash( 'Something normal happened.' );
$this->flash( 'Something good happened.', 'success' );
$this->flash( 'Danger!', 'error' );
And in my layout I added this:
<?php echo $flash->show(); ?>
Now you can us css to style your messages. The classes are 'status', 'success' and 'error'.
This is inspired by the set_message() function in Drupal.
I'd like to submit an update for this though. I've tweaked it a little to be a little more robust.
weil sonst machner browser die meldungen noch wo anzeigt, wo sie gar nich mehr sein sollten...
hatte ne weile gebraucht diesen fehler zu finden...
sonst wundert sich echt noch jemand über meldungen an der falschen stellen
also einfach einbauen, dann passts
but it doesnt seem like that..
i tried to solve this using the functions already present. but i would have to change core files. thats no good.
does your helper work on reload as well as without reloading?
mark
Nate, are you sure that the core provides this functionality? Please see my discussion with Christoph. I'll concede that it's generally better to use the default way of doing things and that the default way would work for me most of the time. But will anyone admit that I've added a bit of functionality, not to mention made the code required to set the message in the controller a bit shorter? You can say that the functionality is not an improvement, but it certainly makes it possible to do something that can't be done with the core method (set two messages without having different keys).
And yes, I looked at the API. It wasn't very clear what the key does without looking at the source code. But I could tell from testing that the second message overwrites the first.
Why not simply try it? ;-)
Also: $session->flash('someKey'); returns false, if no message was set, so you could do "conditional messages" with different keys.
Regards, Christoph
$this->Session->setFlash('Your user profile is incomplete.', 'default', array(), 'errorKey');
$this->Session->setFlash('Your hair is on fire.', 'default', array(), 'errorKey');
Will both messages show? Or will the second overwrite the first? I generally won't show more than one message at a time, but I'd like to be able to set messages without worrying about whether I've already done it.
$this->Session->setFlash('my error message', 'default', array(), 'errorKey');
$this->Session->setFlash('my success message', 'default', array(), 'successKey');
In your view:
$session->flash('errorKey');
$session->flash('successKey');
API is your friend:
http://api.cakephp.org/1.2
Search for SessionComponent and SessionHelper.
Regards, Christoph :-)
Regards, Christoph