Should I create a main dispatcher for my mvc application?

digicution

Again, I'm designing my own mvc application.

I was wondering, should I create a dispatcher for my mvc application?

It seems the only logical way to handle default actions.

Ie a index.php page that gathers the entire url then dispatches to controllers based upon the url parameters.

Is this the proper way to do this?

Shrike

I don't think it matters too much. Having a Dispatcher saves a bit of code duplication but then as you point out you need some mapping between URL and Controller. Calling actual pages directly (sometimes referred to as Page Controllers in the MVC dialect) avoids this but then it makes global operations a bit more involved. There's a good discussion here.

Shrike

I should also note that the Chain of Responsibility pattern works nicely in conjunction with the Front Controller/Dispatcher approach. Of the form:


// index.php
$request =& Request::getRequest( $_GET['action'] );
$chain =& new AuthenticationAction( new CachingAction( new $request->getActionClass()));
$view =& $chain->execute( $request );
print $view->getView();