README

This is a skeleton application using the bead PHP MVC framework. Use it to kickstart your own project.

Models

Your model classes should extend Equit\Database\Model and should be placed in the app/Models directory. To create a basic model class for a table in your app's database, extend Equit\Database\Model and provide two static member variables: $table should contain the name of the table in the database and $properties should be an array of column names (array keys) and column types (array values) for each of the columns in the table. This is all that's needed for a simple table's model.

Views

A simple layout - layouts.main - is provided for you to customise for your app. The home page view uses this layout for its content. Use layouts to keep pages in your app consistently structured. You can have as many layouts as you need if different parts of your app need different page structures. You can also use views and layouts for things like email bodies and downloads.

Views and layouts are ordinary PHP files. You should place them in the views directory. You can structure this directory however you wish, placing layouts and views in subdirectories that suit your app. Views are used by providing the view name and its data array to the Equit\View constructor (e.g. new View("home", ["foo" => "bar"])). If you have views in subdirectories, use dot-notation for the name of the view. For example, if you have a view named views/admin/edit-user.php you would use it by calling new View("admin.edit-user").

Views are isolated from the rest of the app. They only have access to the data explicitly provided to them, plus the variable $app, which is the WebApplication instance. Views access the data provided to them either using the $data variable (which is the array of data provided to the view) or by referencing the keys of the view data as variable names. For example, if a view is used by calling new View("home", ["foo" => "bar"]) in the view file the variable $foo will have the value "bar".

Controllers

Controllers are PHP classes. They don't need to inherit any specific class, they just need some public methods to connect to routes. Place them in app/Controllers. One - HomeController - is provided as a simple example. The controller methods you connect to routes should return an object that implements the Equit\Contracts\Response contract. All views implement this contract.

Routes

Routes connect URLs with handlers (usually public methods in your controllers). Routes are defined in route files, which you should place in the routes/ directory. Route files are plain PHP files that should register route handlers with the app's Router. If you're using the built-in router, this is a simple case of calling one of the register methods on the provided Router instance (e.g. $router->registerGet()). Each route file has two variables available to it: $router is the app's Router and $app is the WebApplication instance.

The example routes/web.php route file connects the HomeController's showHomePage() method to the root URL of your app (i.e. the home page).

Route files are isolated from the rest of the app - they do not have access to any of the app's variables, only the $app and $router variables and PHP's superglobals. Every file inside the routes/ directory is automatically loaded when you call WebApplication::exec().

Config

Your app is configured by the files in the config/ directory. Config files are plain PHP files that should each return an array of configuration directives. Configuration is accessed via the WebApplication::config() method, using dot-notation. For example, to access the application's title call WebApplication::instance()->config("app.title"). This call expects the file config/app.php to include the key "title" in the array it returns.

You can add as many configuration files as your app's requirements dictate. You cannot, however, place config files in subdirectories inside config/. All config files are loaded automatically as soon as you instantiate your WebApplication object.

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