Slender Micro Framework

This is intend to be a very light framework. Its first purpose is to understand the principles of MVC structure and easly create a site based on this structure. So, it is helpfull to study and improvement the concepts of a framework.

Inspiration

This framework is inspired on Laravel framework. Many aspects are similar, like folder structure and some blade anotations. Also, part of this work is inspired on a great article of how to implement a route system, writen by Alexandre Barbosa on this post (in portuguese).

Principles

The principle of this framework is to build small pieces of code and join them as packages. For this, some repos are related:

lcloss/view to handle Views and templates. Also available through composer.
lcloss/route to handle Routes and requests. Also available through composer.
lcloss/db to handle Database abstraction and queries. Also available through composer.
lcloss/env to handle environment configuration. also available through composer.

Each of these packages can be used separately, in any project.

Features

This folder structure is used:

+- app
|  +- controller        // Where controllers are
|  +- model             // Where models are
+- bootstrap            // To bootstrap application (includes and constants)
+- helpers              // Functions to help
+- public               // Public folder (where index.php is and css, js, ...)
+- resources            // Where views are
|  +- view              // Views for pages
+- routes               // To manage routes
+- vendor               // Composer packages

Basic usage

Follow these steps to run this framework:

Copy or clone this repo to your local folder
Copy .env.example file on root folder to .env
Edit .env file with your settings
Create or customize a view in resources\views folder. 4.1. This sample uses resources\views\layouts\app.tpl.php as the main view. 4.2. And resources\views\index.tpl.php as the main page, wich extends layouts\app.tpl.php view.
Create or customize routes in routes\router.php
Create or customize the controller in app\controller folder. 6.1. This sample uses app\controller\AppController.php as the main controller.

Routes

Routes are described in this form: Route::get(['set' => '/', 'as' => 'home'], 'AppController@index');

The set value is the uri string. The as value is a name setted to this route. You can refer to a route in a view, by name, as @route('home'). This will produces a http://localhost/ address. Then, set the controller and method for this route. In this case, method index will control the main view, in AppController.php file.

Example with parameters: Route::get(['set' => '/article/{id}/edit', 'as' => 'edit.article'], 'ArticlesController@edit');

This route is point to http://localhost/article/1/edit when you use the @route('edit.article', ['id' => 1]) in a view. You can also use as @route('edit.article', 1)

Views

The main syntax used in a view are:

`@extends(view)`, `@section()` and `@yield`

This will extend the view and include the sections inside a yield notation. If there is no section, the main content will be included on content yield. For example: app.tpl.php

<html>
    <head>
    </head>
    <body>
    @yield(content)
    </body>
</html>

index.tpl.php

@extends(app)
This is the main content

Or, you can also have: index.tpl.php

@extends(app)
@section(content)
This is the main content
@endsection

It will be helpfull to include styles and scripts, like: app.tpl.php

<html>
    <head>
    @yield(styles)
    </head>
    <body>
    @yield(content)
    @yield(scripts)
    </body>
</html>

index.tpl.php

@extends(app)
@section(styles)
<style>
.any-format {
    font-size: 0.8em;
    color: gray;
}
</style>
@endsection
@section(content)
This is the main content
@endsection
@section(scripts)
<script>
alert('Say hello!');
</script>
@endsection

`@route()`

You can easly create routes.

<nav>
    <li><a href="@route('index')">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="@route('blog')">Blog</a></li>
    <li><a href="@route('blog.show', 1)">How to install Slender Micro Framework</a></li>
    <li><a href="@route('blog.create')">New article</a></li>
</nav>

`{{ $variables }}`

You can easly insert variables in views: resources\views\user.tpl.php

<h1>Introduction</h1>
<p>Hello {{ $user }}! You are welcome!</p>

And in a controller: app\controller\UserController.php

$data = [
    'user' => 'Luciano Closs'
];

$view = new View('resources.views', 'tpl.php');
$view->setBase( env('base_dir') );

echo $view->view('user', $data);

ToDo

There are a lot work to do! But, in time, the next developments will handle:

Create tests
Create docs
Middlewares
CSRF protection (will be included on lcloss/view package)
Remove dependency of lcloss/env in some packages
Group of routes
Improve view parser
Use cache with views
A lot more

lcloss/slender