Digitalise Me :: cozy document archive

A demo PHP project showcasing building the MVC application from scratch.

Minimum requirements

A client deals with lots of physical documents. The application should store digital copies of that documents as well as the following information for each document:

• title;
• date of issue;
• name, email, and phone number of the document issuer;
• type (category) of the document;
• information on where the original (physical) version is stored;
• keywords.

The application should provide the possibility to create, read, update, delete, and search for document records, as well as to upload and download digital copies of the documents.

New users should be able to sign up. Registered users should be able to access the application using their usernames and passwords.

Authenticated users should be able to upload and download files, create, read, and search for document records. They should be authorized to update and delete only the records they created.

Approach

The original implementation of this project dates back to 2018 - it happened to be my very first PHP project. Since then, my skills and preferences naturally evolved, so I decided to make a rebuild, changing a lot but preserving the original spirit:

• the project should be designed as the Model-view-controller (MVC) application;
• the productive part of the application should have zero dependencies on any third-party libraries or frameworks;
• for the backend architecture is the main focus, styles are irrelevant.

Here are some of the changes that come with the rebuild:

• project structure;
• approach to the configuration;
• application bootstrap;
• request cycle;
• database abstraction;
• routing;
• messaging between the models and controllers;
• view rendering.

For "then and now" kind of thing, the old code is still available in the xampp branch.

How to run it

1. Make sure you have DDEV installed.
2. Clone, or download and extract the repository.
3. Change to the root of the project.
4. Run the following commands:

   ddev start
   ddev import-db --file=_db/dump.sql
   ddev storage-link

5. Head over to the https://digitaliseme.ddev.site in your browser.

Useful commands

# Start containers (will also trigger the composer install)
ddev start

# If you make changes to the .ddev/config.yaml
ddev restart

# Import the database from the dump file
ddev import-db --file=<filename>.sql

# Open the application in the browser
ddev launch

# Open the database GUI in the browser
ddev phpmyadmin

# Symlink the storage directory to the public directory
ddev storage-link

# Lint the code
ddev exec './vendor/bin/php-cs-fixer fix'

# Stop containers
ddev stop

Kudos

• Brad Traversy inspired original Database and Page classes;
• Sergii Makagon provided invaluable advice and motivation.