PHP-Mesh - Page meshing framework for PHP. Copyright (C) 2003-2009 Trejkaz This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA You can contact the author by electronic mail, which is presently at the following address: trejkaz@trypticon.org PURPOSE: There has been a wonderful project for a while, started by the OpenSymphony team, called SiteMesh. SiteMesh is a way to merge and style web pages, without needing complicated and hard to learn technologies such as XSL, and without needing unnecessary cruft such as header and footer includes. The goal of this project is to bring the convenience and simplicity of the SiteMesh approach to PHP, borrowing from the Java version where appropriate. REQUIRMENTS: PHP 4.1.2 is known to work. Earlier versions may work too but are untested. (I will add more to this list if you send me a report on what works and what doesn't.) An Apache web server environment is preferable, as it is the server which my sample configuration scripts are written for. Other servers should work with the correct configuration (but does anyone really run anything other than Apache anymore?) For the php_value directives to work in your configuration, the web server requires the AllowOverride directive to contain Options. To be able to decorate files whose extension is .html, you will need AllowOverride FileInfo as well. INSTALLING: The following instructions will have you install a test page to check whether PHP-Mesh will work for you. Instructions will assume installation by an ordinary user, not for site-wide use. 1. Extract the PHP-Mesh archive to a known location, such as ~/phpmesh . 2. Copy the entire contents of the example/ directory to somewhere in your web directory. In my example, I will copy the entire example directory into /var/www/localhost/htdocs/example . 3. Edit the .htaccess file (/var/www/localhost/htdocs/example/.htaccess in my case) so that the placeholders point to the correct location where you extracted PHP-Mesh. 4. View the test page in your web browser. In my case the URL for the test page is http://localhost/examples/ . You should see a red border around that page. If you do not, then you should see an error message detailing what might be wrong. INSTALLATION NOTES: On some default Apache installs, including that of Mac OSX, Apache is configured to allow no overrides. In this event, you will need to add "AllowOverride Options" to your Apache configuration, so that the php_value settings in the .htaccess file work correctly. FURTHER INFORMATION: For further information, I suggest checking out the docs/ directory for more detailed documentation. TODO: I need to make some more documented examples, and write a tutorial. FEEDBACK: Feedback and suggestions to trejkaz@trypticon.org