[TYPO3-mvc] A question about MVC when an extension doesn't have it's own table

[Stephen Bungert]

Hello,

mybe some of you with more programming knowledge can help me here.

I'm making an extbase extension that impliments the flickr API, I want it 
because I have tt_news articles and I want to use tt_news's tag field to 
query flicker for images with these tags and show a galllery of matching 
image sin my article. I also want to the plugin to take page keywords or a 
record's keywords (if on some kind of single record page) and show images.

My problem is, ist that my other extbase extensions had tables...

This time I don't need any tables, I just query flicker with information 
provided by TS to build the query.

As I don't have any repositories and any tables I just created a model 
called "Tx_Flickrimages_Domain_Model_Flickr", and in it I put some variables 
and functions that I need in order to display things how I want in my views.

Here's how it looks so far (just testing at the moment):

<?php
/**
 *
 *
 * @package flickrimages
 * @license http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html GNU Lesser General Public 
License, version 3 or later
 *
 */
class Tx_Flickrimages_Domain_Model_Flickr extends 
Tx_Extbase_DomainObject_AbstractEntity {

 /**
  * Flickr's tag limit when searching by tag
  *
  * @var integer
  */
 const maxtags = 20;

 /**
  * flickr params description
  *
  * @var array
  */
 protected $params;

 /**
  * flickr url description
  *
  * @var string
  */
 protected $url;



 /**
  * Returns the maxtags
  *
  * @return integer $maxtags
  */
 public function getMaxtags() {
  return self::maxtags;
 }

 /**
  * Returns the params
  *
  * @return array $params
  */
 public function getParams() {
  return $this->params;
 }

 /**
  * Sets the params
  *
  * @param array $params
  * @return void
  */
 public function setParams(array $params) {
  // Todo: remove excess tags
  $params = $this->encodeParams($params);

  $this->params = $params;
 }

 /**
  * Returns the url for a flicker api query.
  *
  * @return string
  */
 public function getUrl() {
  return $this->url;
 }

 /**
  * Creates the url for a flicker api query.
  *
  * @return string
  */
 public function setUrl() {
  $url   = '';
  $encodedParams = $this->getParams();

  if (!empty($encodedParams)) {
   $url = 'http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?' . $encodedParams;
  }

  $this->url = $url;
 }

 /**
  * Returns the parameters url encoded in a string for querying flickr, or 
an empty string if $this->params is empty.
  *
  * @param array $params
  * @return string
  */
 protected function encodeParams(array $params) {
  $encodedParams = '';

  if (!empty($params)) {
   $encodedParams = array();

   $params['format'] = 'php_serial'; // Add format
   $params    = array_unique($params);

   foreach ($params as $name => $value){

    $encodedParams[] = urlencode($name) . '=' . urlencode($value);
   }

   $encodedParams = implode('&', $encodedParams);
  }

  return $encodedParams;
 }

 /**
  * Query flicker with a url made up of the parameters set in TypoScript.
  *
  * @return string
  */
 public function queryFlickr() {
  $response = file_get_contents($this->getUrl());
  return unserialize($response);
 }
}
?>


I also have a simple controller at the moment:

<?php
/**
 *
 *
 * @package flickrimages
 * @license http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html GNU Lesser General Public 
License, version 3 or later
 *
 */
class Tx_Flickrimages_Controller_FlickrController extends 
Tx_Extbase_MVC_Controller_ActionController {

 /**
  * Flickr model
  *
  * @var Tx_Flickrimages_Domain_Model_Flickr
  */
 protected $flickr;

 /**
  * action list
  *
  * @return void
  */
 public function listAction() {
  $photos = $this->flickr->queryFlickr(); // Just for testing; make an image 
search by tags from TS

  if (is_array($photos)) {
   $this->view->assign('photos', $photos['photos']['photo']);
  } else {
   t3lib_div::debug('$flickrResult is not an array', 'Flickr Result Error');
  }
  #$rsp = file_get_contents($url);

  #$rsp_obj = unserialize($rsp);

 }

 /**
  * Initializes the current action
  *
  * @return void
  */
 public function initializeAction() {
  // Create flicker model object
  $this->flickr = 
t3lib_div::makeInstance('Tx_Flickrimages_Domain_Model_Flickr');
  $this->flickr->setParams($this->settings['params']);
  $this->flickr->setUrl();
 }
}
?>

My questions are:

I created an instance of my model in the initializeAction()  function. Is 
this the correct thing to do? I found someone else doing this when they also 
had an extbase extension without tables (some twitter extension) , I used 
the pibase makeinstance function for this, but I think maybe I should be 
using some extbase function for this instead? If so which?

Do I need the model if I don't have any repositories? Would it be better to 
just do everything in the controller?

The flicker API has many methods for querying their database... I thought I 
would just have one controller with a different action for each one... Is 
this the correct thing to do, or should I have different contollers for each 
one? I thought I shouldn't bother doing this as they are all the same - 
query the database and pass the results on to my views.

Thanks for any suggestions/help.