route.js: access helper in permalink

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I start working on a i18n plugin which , among other things, generate requests and permalink and save it to a dictionnary in plugin for later use (e.g: /pikachu become /fr/pikachu and /en/pikachu).

Since permalink doesn’t have access to helper, it make it more difficult to add permalink to a dictionnary and to implement some features, for examples:

• “prefix_except_default” (add i18n.code except for the default locale)
• “permalink replacement” if we want to change the permalink for different locales, (e.g: /en/bulbasaur and /fr/bulbizarre)
• and probably others…

Describe the solution you’d like I can add an helper to generate i18n requests in all as the following:

  all: async ({ helpers }) => helpers.i18n.requests([{ slug: 'pikachu' }])

So it can be great to be able to do the same for permalink like this:

  permalink: ({ request, helpers }) => helpers.i18n.permalink(request, `pokemon/${request.slug}/`),

Describe alternatives you’ve considered

• I consider rewriting the slug params in allRequests hook but it doesn’t feel right at all and will add others issues for hreflang and probably other things.
• we can also add all, permalink and data hooks but it can probably add complexity by hiding some functions, so we should avoid it I guess.

[nickreese]

@kiuKisas

Interesting. Your way will work and I think the permalink function likely should have access to the helpers. (see below)

That said, you could also change the array returned by helpers.i18n.requests to include an i18nPermalink and use that in your permalink function permalink: ({request}) => request.i18nPermalink, instead of calling the helpers.

(NOTE: Elder.js does enforce a slug to be on each request to keep people from shooting themselves in the foot, the slug doesn’t have to be used in generating the permalink.)

Helpers to Permalink

If you still want to explore adding the helpers to the permalink here is how:

You’ll need to add the i18n helper to the helpers object on bootstrap.

Before we implement this in the core, can you test it locally and make sure it works well for you?

Look for this line in your local copy of Elder.js: node_modules/@elderjs/elderjs/build/Elder.js

                    request.permalink = await this.routes[request.route].permalink({
                        request,
                        settings: { ...this.settings },
                    });

and change it to:

                    request.permalink = await this.routes[request.route].permalink({
                        request,
                        settings: { ...this.settings }, // this should be a readonly proxy... will fix this next release. 
                        helpers: createReadOnlyProxy_1.default(this.helpers, 'helpers', `${request.route} permalink function`),
                    });

Other

Have you given thought to how users would use the helpers.permalinks.pokemon({request}) helper to build links? It seems that the signature of the helpers.i18n.permalink may be a bit limiting.

[kiuKisas]

Sure, I understand, what I mean is, once we’ll add helpers object to the permalink() function, if we use this feature, helpers.permalink will not work (and we have to add a new permalinks helper as you suggest) . It can be confusing for someone who is not award of that; so I propose to write something about it in the documentation once the PR is merge.