Setting the Route Priority

Note

Route priority is available from Contao 4.13 and is handled by MM from version 2.3.

Contao and MetaModels must extract the page from a given URL based on its alias and any included slug parameters (key-value pairs) and respond accordingly. Conflicts and ambiguities can arise when interpreting the meaning of URL elements. Route priority allows you to influence the order in which these are resolved. The following examples illustrate the available options.

Filtering with “folderurl” and “auto_item”

A typical structure for displaying data with MM is a list page and a detail page. The detail page often hides the filter key using the URL parameter “auto_item”. The detail page is also frequently a subpage of the list page. With folderurl enabled, the pages might be structured as follows:

  • List page alias: projects

  • Detail page alias: projects/project

With an MM filter value of test, the full URL would be projects/project/test (without domain and suffix).

This could be interpreted as either:

  • Alias: projects with key: project and value: test — or

  • Alias: projects/project with key: auto_item and value: test

Without prioritising the resolution, it would be more or less random which variant is resolved first. By setting a higher route priority (10) on the detail page than on the list page (0) in the page properties, the resolution becomes unambiguous and is handled cleanly.

If the detail page alias is e.g. simply project-details, there is no ambiguity and route priority is not needed.

List and Detail Page with the Same Alias

If you want to serve both the list and the detail page under the same page alias, this can be achieved with the following settings:

List page:

  • Title: List

  • Alias: list

  • Route priority: 0

  • Requires item: off

  • MM List — in render settings, configure redirect to “Details” page + filter

Detail page:

  • Title: Details

  • Alias: list

  • Route priority: 10

  • Requires item: on

  • MM List with filter rule “Simple lookup” and URL parameter “auto_item”

The list would then be accessible e.g. via the alias projects and a detail view via projects/test.

Link to a Detail Page in the Navigation

If you want to include one or more MM detail pages in the standard Contao page navigation, you should use appropriate extensions and their hooks or events.

A quick solution is to create a regular Contao page with e.g. alias projects/test and a detail page with alias projects, whose detail view can be called via projects/test (URL parameter “auto_item”).

By giving the MM detail page a higher route priority (10) than the regular Contao page (0), the link is resolved cleanly.