What's a good way to pass a list of items 2-3 items to a method in my controller? I was thinking of just using the URL.... like so:
http://myserver/myapp/mycontroller/mymethod/parm1/parm2/listitem1/listitem2/listitem3
Is there a better way to do this? This data is not coming from a form, but rather from a database query and I'm building a hyperlink with it.
I guess the only part that bothers me is that I won't know in advance how many items I have when i'm parsing this url.
Its possible that I'll get none, or all 3 or some value in between. So the method that then has to parse this url will just keep looping until uri->segment() returns false, indicating that it's hit the first empty uri segment. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
EDIT 1:
Just in case it wasn't clear, my model is getting the data from the database and will also build the list. The question is really about parsing an undetermined number of uri segments. Just wondering if there's a better way to do this. Thanks!
EDIT 2
Here's some more information to help you understand my MVC app. I don't think my issue is the way I've organized my code as far as who is doing what.. But just in case it helps...
I have methodA in my model that queries database and passes back to my controller listitem1, listitem2 and listitem2. The controller then builds a string that represents a URL like:
http://myserver/myapp/mycontroller/methodB/parm1/parm2/listitem1/listitem2/listitem3
Then the view display a hyperlink using the url above. When the user clicks on this hyperlink, it calls methodB. In methodB, I since I don't know the number of items, I will just loop through all segments until I hit my first false.
As far as why I need to do this / what I'm doing... here's some background info: I'm query a database for a list of ports on a switch that are considered trunks - ones that should not be modified. this is what method A does.
methodB run a command against a switch and it returns a bunch of data back. the view that displays the data from methodB will allow the end user to make further changes to the switch. before I display the data from methodB, i want to filter out the list of ports I got from methodA so they cannot be tampered with.
Hope this helps.
Edit 3
I need both methodA and methodB because they serve two different purposes. methodA displays summary data about ports from my database. Think of methodA as a function that shows documentation about the switch. The view for methodA in turn, provides "live" links to communicate with the actual switch - this is where methodB comes in. methodB is triggered by one of those live links and it goes and gets a list of ports - similar to methodA - except that it represents what actual, and it doesn't include user defined information about the port. I guess I can have methodB communicate with my database and filter its data before it displays, but if i want to treat these two functions as separate APIs... aka - one set of functions get data out of the database, the other set is a tool to communicate with switches... - then i don't think i want one talking directly to the other. I would like the GUI to tie them together. In fact, i have created two separate models and controllers for what I'll call the database interface, and then the switch interface. So far, i think the forms idea is the most elegant solution. Thanks everyone, for reading.