Development Information

Sorry for the horribly long delay but here is a quick run down on how to extend the BaseController to write your personal controllers.

As mentioned before, the controller acts as the liaison between the model and the view. These are the classes which get looked for and called whenever your site is visited. For example, if your site is http://www.site.com and the URL is http://www.site.com/about, then Mini MVC will automatically look for the controller named ‘AboutController’ in the ‘./app/controllers/’ directory. The class name for each controller should have the name ‘Controller’ at the end, in order to prevent any namespace collisions between the controllers and the models. It also allows you to quickly and easily determine the difference between the two.

For each controller, you can have as many methods as you would like. These methods are also accessible through the web depending on the URL. For example, http://www.site.com/about/contact would call the ‘contact’ function within the ‘about’ controller. If no function name is provided in the URL, then the default function which is called will be used. This is defined in the configuration file (./app/config/config.php) as the __DEFAULTFUNCTION__. The default function which is called in ‘index’.

Please Note: if you don’t want a function to be web-accessible, prefix it with __ and it will be automatically ignored.

When making your own controller, you should always extend the base class (BaseController) because it provides a bit of additional functionality which is not available if you only make it extend the base class. For example, when you are using a model in your controller, you can then use

$this -> __loadModel ( 'ModelName' );

to load the model into memory and then access it directory through the instance of the controller (i.e. $this -> ModelName).

A sample controller will look like this:

<?php
class SampleController extends BaseController // Accessible by the web through http://www.site.com/sample
{
    public function __construct ()
    {
        parent::__construct (); // Always call the parent's constructor to initialize all information
    }
 
    public function index () // Will be called if no function name is provided (i.e. http://www.site.com/sample)
    {
         // In here you will do any of your data manipulation or generation
         // and tell it what views and models to use
         Base::__loadViews ( array (
                 // Define the 3 parts of the view (header, body and footer) - these definitions are not necessary but they are useful
                 Base::VIEW_HEADER => array ( 'header.php' /* The view name(s) to use for the header */ ),
                 Base::VIEW_BODY => array ( 'body.php' /* The view name(s) to use for the body */ ),
                 Base::VIEW_FOOTER => array ( 'footer.php' /* The view name(s) to use for the footer */ )
             ),
                 // Any variables to send in
                 array (
                     // Please Note: All variables MUST have a name associated with them.
                     'key' => 'value', // Variables to be accessible to all views (accessible through $key in the view)
                     Base::VIEW_HEADER => array ( 'Title' => 'Welcome' ) // Variables only accessible to the header view (can be done for the body and footers as well)
             )
         );
    }
 
    // The $username variable will be filled in with the value associated with information after the function name
    public function other ( $username ) // Will be called if no function name is provided (i.e. http://www.site.com/sample/other/judda)
    {
         // i.e. http://www.site.com/sample/other/judda => $username = 'judda'
         // In here you will do any of your data manipulation or generation
         // and tell it what views and models to use
         Base::__loadViews ( array (
                 // Define the 3 parts of the view (header, body and footer) - these definitions are not necessary but they are useful
                 Base::VIEW_HEADER => array ( 'header.php' /* The view name(s) to use for the header */ ),
                 Base::VIEW_BODY => array ( 'body.php' /* The view name(s) to use for the body */ ),
                 Base::VIEW_FOOTER => array ( 'footer.php' /* The view name(s) to use for the footer */ )
             ),
                 // Any variables to send in
                 array (
                     // Please Note: All variables MUST have a name associated with them.
                     'key' => 'value', // Variables to be accessible to all views (accessible through $key in the view)
                     Base::VIEW_HEADER => array ( 'Title' => 'Welcome',
                         'name' => $username ) // Variables only accessible to the header view (can be done for the body and footers as well)
             )
         );
    }
}

That is all I can think about for this topic, please feel free to ask any questions about it so I can expand on this tutorial.

Here I am going to give a quick run down about the the Mini MVC project that I have been working on recently and how to use it.

First, let’s start off with the configuration. As I said in my previous post, it will work right out of the box with no modifications needed. However, sometimes things aren’t always how you want them. In these cases it’s good to know what can easily be changed and what cannot.

In the file: ./app/config/config.php

This is the configuration file which comes with the system by default.

Within this section of the configuration file, there is only one thing that you may need to modify. That is the __SHOWINDEX__ defined value. __SHOWINDEX__ will define whether or not the ‘index.php’ will show up in links which are created using the __INDEXPATH__ defined value. If set to TRUE, then it will be added to the link, otherwise it will not be. This is especially useful if mod_rewrite is not enabled on your server. This will just force the application to send everything through the main page instead of masking the use of the ‘index.php’ page.

/* Break up the current path to contain all information */
$split = preg_split ( '/\//', $_SERVER [ 'SCRIPT_NAME' ], -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY );
 
/* Allow the user of the script to decide if the index should be included in urls */
define ( '__SHOWINDEX__', false );
 
/* Define the base path for the script */
define ( '__BASEPATH__', '/' . $split [ 0 ] . '/' );
 
/* Define the index path for the script depending on previous settings */
define ( '__INDEXPATH__', __BASEPATH__ . ( __SHOWINDEX__ ? 'index.php' : NULL ) );

This following section should not be modified just for ease of use:

/* Define where the system libraries are stored */
define ( '__SYSTEM__', __FULLPATH__ . 'system/' );
define ( '__SYSTEMLIBS__', __SYSTEM__ . 'libraries/' );
define ( '__SYSTEMHELPERS__', __SYSTEM__ . 'helpers/' );
 
/* Define the application path */
define ( '__APPPATH__', __FULLPATH__ . 'app/' );
 
/* Define where the user libraries are stored */
define ( '__USERLIBS__', __APPPATH__ . 'libraries/' );
define ( '__USERHELPERS__', __APPPATH__ . 'helpers/' );
 
/* Define the configuration */
define ( '__CONFIG__', __APPPATH__ . 'config/' );

This spot basically defines everything about where stuff within the application is actually stored. For example, we can see the creation of the links to the system helpers and system libraries paths. If any of these values are changed, the corresponding changes should be made in the ./system/ folders.

Next we move onto the definition of the location of the model, view and controllers directories as well as the configuration directory in case there are any other things which require it.

/* Define the configuration */
define ( '__CONFIG__', __APPPATH__ . 'config/' );
 
/* Define the model / view / controller directories */
define ( '__MODELS__', __APPPATH__ . 'models/' );
define ( '__VIEWS__', __APPPATH__ . 'views/' );
define ( '__CONTROLLERS__', __APPPATH__ . 'controllers/' );

The next key part is the following:

/* Define whether to enable error message logging or not, and where to store the log */
define ( '__LOGERRORS__', true );
define ( '__ERRORLOG__', 'error_log' );
define ( '__DISPLAYERRORS__', true );

This defines the actions which happen when an error occurs. These errors are not the errors which are send by PHP, but ones generated by the Mini MVC script when trying to complete any of your tasks.

The first two definitions: __LOGERRORS__ and __ERRORLOG__ work hand in hand. If __LOGERRORS__ is set to true, then all of the errors which occur will automatically be appended to the file defined in __ERRORLOG__.

The __DISPLAYERRORS__ definition is currently set to true however, this should only be used in development because it displays all of the error messages on the screen after all of the other scripts have been run (after your controller has been called). This will make it so you reveal a bit to much information to the user as well as invalidates any HTML which has been emitted (it emits more HTML after the </html> tag which is not allowed.

The next section:

/* Define the default class and method */
define ( '__DEFAULTCLASS__', 'main' );
define ( '__DEFAULTFUNCTION__', 'index' );

Just defines what the application should be doing if it hasn’t been provided any information about what controller nor the function to use.

In summary:

Hope this helps to make the configuration file a little more clear. Next step, making controllers.