Shared controller for frontend and backend actions in Magento

Question

I am using same controller for front-end and back-end action, everything works fine except setting global messages when redirect back to desired admin page.

I have used standard admin session handler to set messages for admin actions:

$notifierObject = Mage::getSingleton('adminhtml/session');

PS:

1. Controller being called is of front-end type.

2. Redirected admin page is an order view page.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT

Customer action : my.testdomain.com/modulename/controllerfrontname/action1 is called when form is submitted.

Similar form is there in admin sales order view page. Admin form submit action : my.testdomain.com/modulename/controllerfrontname/action1 , as you can see the same action is called.

frontName of admin and frontend routers is the same - modulename.(But I guess, this is not causing any problem)

I am successfully getting redirected back to admin sales order view page, but without any global messages that I have set in $notifierObject of admin session. That's the only problem.

• SOlearner: As answers to this question suggests that this is not a proper way to avoid redundancy even though your logic part works perfectly.

Answer 1

your question is somehow unclear, but I can give you one hint.
Don't use the same controller for frontend and backend.
you should have 2 of them because they serve 2 different purposes.
If you don't want to duplicate the code, out the common methods in a helper and call them in the different controllers.

• SOlearner: Thank you for your prompt suggestion.. and yes, moving common piece of code to helper for both controllers to use it, seems perfect solution.

Answer 2

In addition to Marius answer, sharing a controller between frontend and adminhtml is actually quite impossible.

For the controllers to work adminhtml needs to extend Mage_Adminhtml_Controller_Action while the frontend controller needs to extend Mage_Core_Controller_Front_Action.

Depending on what kind of code is shared between the two controllers it should either be moved to a Helper or a Model

Answer 3

If by your question you mean you are using the same frontName for both a frontend and backend router in your config.xml then you will get issues when routing requests - Magento won't neccessarily route to correct admin or frontend controller. A better setup is to use the existing admin router for your admin controller requests, and define a new router for frontend requests. Doing it this way also allows you to easily distinguish between an admin, and a frontend request. So in config.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
 ...
 <frontend>
 ...
 <routers>
 <module>
 <use>standard</use>
 <args>
 <module>NameSpace_Module</module>
 <frontName>module</frontName>
 </args>
 </module>
 </routers>
 ...
 </frontend>
 ...
 <admin>
 ...
 <routers>
 <adminhtml>
 <args>
 <modules>
 <NameSpace_Module before="Mage_Adminhtml">NameSpace_Module</NameSpace_Module>
 </modules>
 </args>
 </adminhtml>
 </routers>
 ...
 </admin>
 ...
</config>