===========
The goal: to create a lightweight framework that allows web entities to be rendered and served back to an HTTP client.
The result: Pandora, a small package that simplifies creation of dynamic web pages by assuming things about where your site's assets live.
Take a composer dependency on pandora-mvc:
{
"require": {
"zutto/pandora-mvc": "dev-master"
}
}
Provide Pandora with the runtime configuration it needs in your index.php:
PageDispatcher::registerLoader( $your_autoloader_for_controllers );
PageDispatcher::registerLoader( $your_autoloader_for_models );
EnvironmentFactory::setConfigFile(dirname(__FILE__)."/conf/environment.json");
FrontController::render(DEFAULT_PAGE, DEFAULT_ACTION);
The 3 parts:
- A classloader for your controllers (and models)
- A path to your JSON configuration directives that will provide runtime config
- A call to FrontController::render
Your controllers will simply be generic classes where each method is mapped to a page.
When a page is requested, the lifecycle looks like this:
- The appropriate controller is loaded according to the autoloader you've configured
- An instance of it is created and injected with a Request and Model objects
- An appropriate view is loaded according to the Accept-Type of the request
- The page method is called and its return value is exposed to the view
- Viola!
Here's an example of a controller for an operation that gives a formatted date:
class TimeController {
protected $request;
public function __construct( Request $request ) {
$this->request = $request;
}
public function format() {
$fmt = $this->request->get('format', 'You must specify a date format');
return array (
'timestamp' => date($fmt)
);
}
}
If you've set up a configuration like the one in the section above, TimeController::format() will be called whenever someone sends a request to:
index.php?page=time&action=format
By accessing that URL, Pandora will execute the format method and try to load a view file in views/time/method.html.php--or method.json.php if the request specified application/json as the Accept-type.