PHP MVC design pattern

A simple, secure and easy to use PHP MVC design pattern written in pure php >=5.6

1. Structure Overview
1. Setup
2. Basic Example
5. TODO

Structure Overview: ↑

├── App
│   ├── Config.php
│   ├── home
│   │   ├── Controllers.php
│   │   └── Models.php
│   └── views
│       ├── 404.php
│       ├── 500.php
│       └── home
│           └── index.php
├── assets
│   ├── css
│   │   └── style.css
│   ├── images
│   │   └── favicon.ico
│   └── js
│       └── script.js
├── base
│   ├── footer.php
│   └── header.php
├── Core
│   ├── Controller.php
│   ├── Error.php
│   ├── Model.php
│   ├── ORM.php
│   ├── Router.php
│   └── View.php
├── index.php
├── .htaccess
├── logs
│   └── 2023-6-01.txt

Dir	Description
App/Config.php	project configuration lives here. i.e: Domain Address, DataBase Authentication info...
App/home	basic example of how an application would be. it contains controllers and models
App/views	root directory of html templates for applications
App/views/404.php	custom 404 error page
App/views/500.php	custom 500 error page
assets	static files like css, js and images goes here
base	base html template files like header and footer lives here. you can choose not to use this
Core	mvc core files lives here. don't change these files unless you know what you're doing
index.php	this is where our routes will be written in
logs	you can see your error reports here if there is any

Setup: ↑

Download this repo by cloning

git clone https://github.com/Rewzaw/php-mvc.git

or simply download zip file.

after creating a database, go change App/Config based on your requirements.

if you're struggling creating a database. refer to this Tutorial

Basic Example - Models: ↑

the goal is to read our post records from database and show them in home index

first create a Table named 'posts' with columns 'id, name, content' using a DBMS

if you're struggling creating a Table. refer to this Tutorial

here is an example of how Models would be used correctly in 3 methods of PDO, MYSQLI and a custom ORM

this code is located in App/home/Models.php directory

<?php

// declare namespace for your app
namespace App\home;
use PDO;

class Models extends \Core\Model
{
    public static function getPosts_ORM()
    { // ORM example
        $db = static::ORM();
        return $db->table('posts')->select()->execute();
    }

    public static function getPosts_PDO()
    { // PDO example
        $db = static::PDO();
        $stmt = $db->query("SELECT * FROM `posts`");
        return $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
    }

    public static function getPosts_MYSQLI()
    { // MYSQLI example
        $db = static::MYSQLI();
        $result = mysqli_query($db, "SELECT * FROM `posts`");
        return mysqli_fetch_assoc($result);
    }
}

Basic Example - Controllers: ↑

we'll use Model output in Controller. getPosts_MYSQLI method used here.

Controller method names should be always end with ‍‍Action Suffix. (this is a security feature)

View::render method used to pass context values to our template and render html

this code is located in App/home/Controllers.php directory

<?php

// declare namespace for your app
namespace App\home;

use Core\View;
use App\home\Models;

class Controllers extends \Core\Controller
{
    protected function indexAction()
    {
        $context = [
            'posts' => Models::getPosts_MYSQLI() // records retrieved using Model
            
            // 'params' => $this->route_params,
            // 'server' => $this->server, // $_SERVER
            // 'get' => $this->get, // $_GET
            // 'post' => $this->post, // $_POST
            // 'files' => $this->files, // $_FILES
        ];

        View::render('home/index.php', $context);
    }
}

Basic Example - Views: ↑

in html template we can access to posts.

this code is located in App/views/home/index.php directory

<?php

require App\Config::HEADER;
?>

<div style="display: block">
    <h1>Hello World!</h1>
    <br>
    <ul>
    <?php foreach ($posts as $post) { ?>
        <li><?= $post['name'] ?></li>
    <?php } ?>
    </ul>
</div>

<?php require App\Config::FOOTER ?>

Basic Example - Routing: ↑

take a look at this example:

$router->add(
  '', // url
  [
    'controller' => 'home', // app name
    'action' => 'index' // controller method without 'Action' suffix
  ]
);

you can accept ids as url parameter like this:

$router->add('blog/post/{id:\d+}', ['controller' => 'blog', 'action' => 'detail']);

\d+ represents digital int

then you can access id in controller using $this->route_params['id']