Simplicity. Elmo is a super lightweight, single-file, scaffold for creating static web features. You don't need to install any special tools (LAMP stack is fine), don't need to learn a templating language, and you're free encouraged to hack it. Elmo is less than 200 lines that can be run dynamically for rapid development, and produce static files for production.
The name comes from the natural static electricity phenomenon, St. Elmo's Fire.
The easiest and quickest way to install Elmo is via composer:
composer create-project journeygroup/elmo your-project-name
If you’re cloning an existing Elmo project, any dependencies will be ignored. Run composer install from within the project’s directory to install dependencies according to the composer.lock file (or composer.json if no composer.lock file is present).
Unpack Elmo, and point an Apache server at the Public directory. Add routes (pages) to your project by simply creating php files inside the Routes directory. All files are resolved to clean urls. Example:
Routes/
- index.php
- about.php
- products/
- index.php
- flashlight.php
- candle.php
The above structure would resolve to the following URLs:
/
/about
/products
/products/flashlight
/products/candle
Layouts are simply html templates. Route files are nested inside layouts, no, there's no silly templating language, turns out PHP is capable of outputting strings too! Here's an example of a basic layout:
<!-- File: Layouts/master.php -->
<html>
<head>
<title>Sample Layout</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php include $this->route; ?>
</body>
</html>Only one layout may be used per route. Any php variables defined in a layout are accessible within the route file as well. As a bonus, route files can define what layout they should be rendered with.
<!-- File: Routes/products/index.php -->
<?php $this->setLayout('products'); ?>
<h1>Available Products</h1>
...The above code sample would render the route using Layouts/products.php layout file.
Once you're development is complete, pop open a terminal, navigate to your project and execute:
php elmo ~/your_output_directory
Done.
Layout nesting is the next feature on the docket.
Pull requests gladly accepted.