Yet Another MVC PHP Framework

YAMPF is a minimalistic mvc framework for building php applications. It uses mod_rewrite rules to route URLs to the correct controllers and actions.

I started creating the framework following the tutorial here http://anantgarg.com/2009/03/13/write-your-own-php-mvc-framework-part-1/, but extended and changed it a lot and intend to change and extend it much more.

To get started, just copy the project to a folder in your web server's document root. Open the folder's url in the browser and you should read "Hello, YAMPF".

When no controller and action is given in the url, YAMPF takes start/index instead. So the method index in the class StartController has been called an afterwards the view start/index.php has been rendered. The controller just set the greetings message and the view displayed it inside a H1 tag.

To call a controller and action directly go to the URL

http://server/path/to/app/controller/action/param_1/param_2

Now you can create your own controllers and actions. The filename of a controller has to be its class name in lowercase. The controller class name has to end with Controller.

For every action has to be a corresponding view. In the case of our start/index example the view is located in the views/start directory and is named index.php.

To create a link to a controller/action use the function

_link($controller, $action, $params)

YAMPF also includes a very simple way to access data stored in a mysql database called sppo (self-persistent php objects). To use this functionallity, change the setting USE_DB (in config/config.php) to true and add your db connection data to the config.

Now you have to create a class (in the model directory) for each db table you want to access. This classes have to extend the class Model and at least implement the abstract methods.

To see how it works, go to the Person class. When you have a table named persons with the following columns

id INTEGER AUTO INCREMENT
first_name VARCHAR(50)
last_name VARCHAR(50)
age INTEGER

you can use the Person class the following way

// fetch a Person by ID
$p = new Person();
$p->id = 2;
$p->fetch();

// fetch a list of persons by age
$p = new Person();
$oldOnes = $p->fetchAll('age > 60');

// store a new person
$p = new Person();
$p->first_name = 'Eddie';
$p->last_name = 'Russett';
$p->age = 21;
$p->persist();

Simple, eh?

• You can redirect to another controller/action from within an action by calling

    $this->callStack($controller, $action);
  

• If you call

    $this->setAjax();
  

  no header and footer is rendered. This way you can use the action for ajax/json requests.

• Only the public directory must be within the document root.

• All stylesheets, java scripts and images go to the assets directory.

• Inside the assets folder you find some stubs for the frontend, including jQuery 1.7.2, html5shiv and SASS/COMPASS stubs.

• Much more and better documentation.
• SPPOs need more work (more data types, relations, etc.).
• Adding some build framework, e.g. grunt.js.
• Adding boilerplate, etc.

Fork, anyone?