simple-router

A simple lightweight routing class for PHP with syntax inspired by Express.js

Why? I really like the way Express handles routing. But sometimes I can't use Node for a production app. After looking at several routers made for PHP, none of them seemed to have the simple routing capabilities that one would find in Express.

Is this a full emulation of Express? No. This is a really really paired down subset of features. This does not do exotic regex matching, does not support the wildcard .all method, and it only contains a select few methods for responses - just enough to get the job done. If you need exotic route matching or faster performance, look to another well tested routing solution/framework.

Setup

.htaccess for Apache

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [NC,L]

Include the class in your main controller

<?php

require('SimpleRouter.class.php');
$router = new SimpleRouter($basePath, $allowedMethods);

Optional arguments:

• $basepath (string) - set the basepath of the app if located in a subdirectory
• $allowedMethods (array) - a list of allowed request methods, app will close with an error if request is made that's not on the list

Routing

Route matching is functionally close to Express's by passing an anonymous callback when a route is matched. Examples:

//respond with "hello world" when a GET request is made to the homepage
$router->get('/', function($req, $res){
	$res->send('hello world');
});


//respond with JSON
$router->get('/data.json', function($req, $res){
	$res->json(['foo' => 'bar', 'baz' => 'boo']);
});


//respond to a POST request where :id is a parameter
$router->post('/staff/:id', function($req, $res){
	$res->send('Got POST request for ' . $req['params']['id']);
});


//Match the route and allow optional query strings to be passed in
$router->delete('/person/firstname/:first/lastname/:last?dept=accounting', function($req, $res){
	$res->send('Deleting ' . $req['params']['last'] . ', ' . $req['params']['first'] . 'from ' . $req['query']['dept']; 
});

$req

Similar to Express's $request object. Is a keyed array containing data about the request that was made.

• originalUrl - the original URL that was passed in
• path - the actual path, minus any query strings
• query - keyed array of query strings if they were attached to the route ?KEY=VALUE
• params - keyed array of parameters if matched route segment contained a :
• headers - keyed array of all headers passed in
• ip - left most IP address in x-Forwarded-For header
• body - keyed array of request body

$res

Similar to Express's $response, has chainable methods used to send data to the client.

• send($str) - Send a plain string
• json($arr) - Send a keyed array as a json object, automatically sets Content-Type: application/json header
• status($num) - Send an http status code
• set($key, $val) - Set a http header
• end() - Terminate the script immediately. Useful to halt execution of a completed route after sending a response, script no longer has to match any more routes

While these methods are all chainable, you will want them to follow the flow of $res->status()->set()->send/json()->end() for logical reasons.