README

Colibri is a (really) small, but fully functional (M)VC framework. It's meant for small projects or quickly bootstrapping web applications.

As most of the core is the routing functionality (see Controlers below), it can also serve as a basis for your own, custom MVC framework.

Colibri is licensed under the MIT licence.

SHOULD YOU USE THIS ?

Probably not. It was an experiment, a simple proof-of-concept. I did use it in production, and it works very well. But, there are so many better alternatives out there (Silex is my personal favorite).

It's what prompted me to write this blog post.

So, if you want to use it, go ahead. It's dead-simple, works very well, and is unit tested.

But, I don't recommend it :-).

Philosophy

Colibri makes no assumption about your workflow, nor does it restrict you in any way (except the template engine - more on that below). This means that it lacks many functionalities found in (much) larger frameworks like Symfony or Zend. But it also means that you can program your application the way you want.

Directory structure

The Colibri core is located in the sys folder. The web and app folders are just examples and are not mandatory. The only thing you need to use Colibri is to a COLIBRI_SYS_PATH constant to point to the sys folder (you can rename this folder if you want), include the Colibri.php file and pass the path to the conf.php file to the Colibri() constructor. After that, you're good to code away !

Template engine

PHP comes bundled with a great, efficient and easy template-engine: PHP itself. Colibri simply uses php code to parse your template files and insert the data. Here again, Colibri enforces very little. By default, it will use a layout (which could be thought of as the HTML wrapper of your content) to which is passed a $view variable. This $viewvariable itself contains string data from a view.

If you've used partials before, then this will look familiar.

Views and layouts are simply PHP files with HTML. You can output any variables you want (iow: name the variables as you see fit in each file).

For convenience, 3 pre-defined variables will be available for the layouts: $stylesheets, $scripts and $view. $stylesheets and $scripts will be populated by calling the $this->view->add_css() or $this->view->add_js() methods in controllers, but this is not mandatory.

Partials ?

You can use Views just as partials. Just call $my_view->partial() to disable passing the view through a layout. This will allow you to have views nested within each other, giving great flexibility. You can use as many views as you want, each linked to a particular template file.

AJAX ?

A view can also be rendered as JSON. By calling $this->view->json(), the template engine will skip the template parsing and directly output all variables as a JSON string. This is super-easy and very usefull for AJAX heavy applications.

Models

Colibri does not provide any models by default. Each application is unique, so it's your job to provide the model logic.

Views

A view in Colibri is simply a file containing both HTML and PHP code. By default, all view files have a .phtml file extension, but this can be set to any extension you want in the app/conf.php file.

Controllers

All controllers should extend the Colibri\Controller class. All public methods with no prefixing underscore will be considered "callable" and can be mapped to in the url. Colibri uses the standard controller/method/param1/param2/.../paramN paradigm for routing the requests. Each parameter is then passed, in the same order, to the class method.

Helper functions

There are a few helper functions that are globally available.

Colibri\conf() retrieves values from the configuration file.

Colibri\url() makes it easier to format internal links for your application.

Colibri\go_to() redirects the current request. It uses the same parameters as url().

Colibri\segment() will return the requested segment from the URI (e.g.: for controller/method/param1, segment(1) will return method - this is also true for i18n applications: fr/controller/method/param1, segment(1) will still return method).

Colibri\language() will return the current language in i18n enabled applications.

i18n out of the box

Colibri can route requests for localized applications be prepending a language parameter to all URIs. This language parameter can be anything you want, and it's up to you to implement the localization or internationalization logic for your application. For example, these are all valid: en/controller/method fr-FR/controller/method ITA/controller/method

If a default language is set, all URIs with no language parameter will be considered of the default language (see language() above).

Use the conf.php file to configure your i18n settings. It's as easy as setting a variable to TRUE: no complex configuration or hacks. It just works.

SEO friendly

Colibri is SEO-friendly. The default .htaccess file provides URL rewriting instructions for Apache servers to remove the index.php from the request (controller/method/param1 instead of index.php/controller/method/param1).

All class names and methods are made URI-friendly by replacing underscores with hyphens and lowercasing all segments (except the language parameter - see above).

Requirements

Colibri requires PHP 5.3 or higher.

Configuration

Configuration directives are found in app/conf.php and are pretty self-explainatory. As mentioned in Directory structure above, you are not bound to the provided directory structure. You can use any structure you want, just as long as all Colibri core files are located in the same directory.

In the provided directory structure, the web directory is the webroot. Colibri code is located outside the web root by default (recommended). If you don't want to place your code outside the webroot, move the app and sys directories in the same directory as index.php. Open index.php and change the COLIBRI_SYS_PATH constant to point where the Colibri core files reside (sys folder).

colibri / colibri

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