Panther Documentation

Panther MVC framework is light-weight and built for quick web application(s) or APIs development. This framework takecares of many aspects for you, which can be a time taking factors in a project development process.

Getting Started

After pulling panther's fresh source from github, you need to care about entry point to your new application. Which resides in at root directory with name index.php

The important section of this file is where you register your entities. i.e.

$app->register('HelloEntity', 'hello');

HelloEntity will be the name of your entity file residing inside app/entities/HelloEntity.php, second parameter is just a friendly name you can give to you registered entity.

After you've registered your first entity, next thing you will need is a Routing to utilize the functionality of that entity. Routing can be done inside of entity itself or using external file. Before that we need to create our first entity file app/entities/HelloEntity.php.

Defining Entity

Entity can be defined by creating a entity file HelloEntity.php inside app/entities directory. The basic layout will look like this i.e.

<?php

namespace App\Entities;

use Panther\Entity\EntityController;

class HelloEntity extends EntityController {

    // Methods goes here

}

Now we need a method inside our entity named test with passed in $id parameter, so we can return it i.e.

    public function test($id)
    {
        return $id;
    }

Now to test this, we need a Routing for this entity, it can be either defined internally or externally (please see routing section below for details). For now, we are going to quickly defined a route internally using a built-in method routes for this entity. i.e.

    public function routes(Router $router)
    {		
        $router->get('/test/:id', 'HelloEntity@test');
    }

Now you can goto your browser type in the project url i.e. in case of xampp/wamp http://localhost/<project_folder>/test/123 and you will see the 123 id passed in as output

Routing

Routing can be done internally inside Entities or can be managed independantly via app/routing/Routes.php external file.

Defining a route

Route can be defined by calling instance of Panther\Router\Router and required Routing Method i.e.

use Panther\Router\Router;

$router = new Router;
$router->get(<URL>, <CALLBACK>); // Here GET routing method is being used

here should be the url provided in browser/api, and it will trigger a against it.

Routing Methods

Routing supports basic restful methods i.e. GET, POST, PUT, PATCH & DELETE. You can use these with instance of Panther\Router\Router i.e.

$router->get(<URL>, <CALLBACK>);
$router->post(<URL>, <CALLBACK>);
$router->put(<URL>, <CALLBACK>);
$router->patch(<URL>, <CALLBACK>);
$router->delete(<URL>, <CALLBACK>);

Callbacks

Callbacks can be defined in three ways;

Closure
Internal Method Call
External Method Call

Closure

You can provided a closure function call simply i.e.

$router->get('test', function(){
    return 'tested'; 
})

If you have passed in parameters, it would simple accept them in closure accordingly i.e.

$router->get('test/:id', function($id){
    return 'tested id:'.$id; 
})

Or multiple parameters can be passed as per requirements i.e.

$router->get('test/:id/:name', function($id, $name){
    return 'tested id:'.$id.' & name:'.$name; 
})

Internal Method Call

Whenever you have defined your routes via routes method inside of Entity, you can simple pass method name string as second parameter and panther will handle the rest i.e.

$router->post('/save', 'saveName');

here saveName is actually a method defined inside same entity. Also parameter passing can be same as discussed in above example of closure. i.e.

public function routes(Router $router){		
    $router->post('/save/:some_id', 'saveName');    
}

// saveName method
public function saveName($id, Request $request){
    return $request->some_posted_variable_name;
}

Please note that instance Request can be used to fetch posted variables, while url get parameters i.e. id can be fetched same as we discussed in closure case.

External Method Call

If you're using routing via external file app/routing/Routes.php, then you need to pass second parameter will entity name string and method name string seperated with @ symbol. i.e.

$this->router->get('/', 'HelloEntity@index');

This route will invoke the HelloEntity class's method index respectively. All other aspect related to parameters & Request object will be same as discussed above.

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