Folders.md

Folders

Kickstart was designed to be a base for two kinds of PHP applications:

• those run from the terminal/command line (CLI), and
• those available from one's Internet browser.

An out-of-the-box Kickstart project has the following folder structure:

|- bin
|- config
|- docker
|- docs
|- |- cookbook
|  \- upgrading
|- public
|- src
|  |- Console
|  |  \- Command
|  |- Database
|  |  \- Table
|  |- Entity
|  |- Http
|  |  |- Action
|  |  |- Middleware
|  |  |  \- Guard
|  |  \- Request
|  |- Provider
|  |- Repository
|  \- Service
|- templates
|- var
|  \- cache
|     \- templates
\- vendor 

bin

This folder contains one file: console. This file is the entry point to run any console command defined within your application. This file contains a list of all the enabled commands.

console should be run from the command line, like so:

php bin/console command:name

config

This folder contains the routes.php file with a list of routes for HTTP actions.

docker

This folder contains additional Xdebug PHP configuration files, used for running your application in Docker containers.

docs

This folder contains all the documentation for Kickstart.

public

This folder contains the file index.php which is the entry point for executing any HTTP actions defined within your application. This file (along with .htaccess) is an example of the "Front Controller" design pattern.

.htaccess contains directives for Apache's mod_rewrite module.

src/Console/Command

This folder contains project's commands classes, available through the bin/console entry point. Each command should be represented by a single class. You can read more about console commands here.

src/Database/Table

The classes within this folder contain meta-data related to database tables, for example: tables' names. The classes within this folder should not be instantiated.

src/Entity

This folder contains classes representing entities, i.e. things that can be uniquely identified by a specific identifier. An entity class could represent a single identifiable row from a database table.

src/Http/Action

This folder contains application's HTTP actions classes. Each route defined in the application's routes list (config/routes.php) should have an HTTP action class assigned to handle the incoming HTTP request and issue an HTTP response in return.

src/Http/Middleware/Guard

This folder contains the application's optional HTTP guards, implemented as HTTP middleware. The classes may be assigned to specific routes. If an incoming request is destined for an action with guards defined, said request will first be handed over to those guards, in the order they were defined.

You can read more about guards here (Middleware section, at the bottom).

src/Http/Request

This folder contains optional classes representing requests, to be passed to HTTP actions, instead of Kickstart's standard request object. A custom request class may, for example contain parameter-specific getters, e.g. getDate().

src/Provider

This folder contains classes with definitions for the Dependency Injection Container. You can read more about Service Providers here.

src/Repository

This folder contains classes representing repositories. Usually repositories are dependent on a database connection, but it doesn't need to be the case.

src/Service

This folder contains classes for various services - in the broad meaning of the term - that your application may need.

templates

This folder contains Twig templates, which are usually used to generate HTML, send back to the browser by the HTTP actions.

var

It is recommended to use this folder for storing auto-generated files, which the user will have no interest in, i.e. cache files.

Out-of-the-box the var/cache/templates folder is used to store compiled Twig templates, which speeds up generating HTML.

vendor

This folder contains all the 3rd party packages needed to run the Kickstart app, including Kickstart's core (system) package.